Krishnakumar Natarajan

Krishnakumar Natarajan, popularly known as KK, has over 30 years of experience in the IT industry and a respected industry veteran in the global IT sector. He is one of the co-founders of Mindtree,^[2] a global information technology solutions company, where he is currently the CEO and Managing Director. He was appointed as the Chairman of NASSCOM for the year 2013–2014.^[3] He was earlier a senior executive with Wipro and is an alumnus of XLRI.

Early Life and Education

KK graduated in 1979 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the College of Engineering Guindy, Chennai, India. In 1981, he completed his Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) majoring in marketing and systems from XLRI, Jamshedpur, India.^[4]

Career

KK started his career in Wipro and held various key positions there from 1982 to 1999. During this time, he started and grew the Ecommerce division as the Chief Executive of the Ecommerce and Financial Solutions Division from 1996 to 1999. He served as Group Vice President of Human Resources and also as Chief Marketing Officer for Wipro’s IT business. .^[5]

In August 1999, KK along with nine other businessmen in IT, co-founded Mindtree.^[6] In the early years of Mindtree, KK was instrumental in setting up the U.S. operations and played a key role in building the organization. He then drove Mindtree’s expansion into Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East, transforming Mindtree’s IT services business. He is also one of the Board of Directors of Mindtree, and is responsible for ensuring high quality of governance throughout the organization.

KK is an Ex-Chairman of NASSCOM and chaired the ‘emerging companies’ forum. In this capacity, he worked towards bringing together large and emerging companies to make the Indian IT industry a globally competitive ecosystem.^[7][8]

KK is an active member of several professional industry organizations, such as the Manufacturer’s Association for Information Technology (MAIT) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).^[8] He is a regular speaker at reputed conferences and is a faculty member at management schools worldwide.

Awards & Recognition

The industry has honored KK with several awards, including the AIMA award for India’s best young manager; Bloomberg UTV’s award as the CEO of the year 2010 in the emerging company category; and Chief Executive Magazine’s recognition as one of the twelve global leaders of tomorrow. KK was ranked number 28 on the 50 highest rated CEOs list published by Glassdoor, 2013.^[9]

Personal Life and Family

KK is married to Akhila Krishnakumar. The couple have 2 sons, Siddarth and Abhirath.

References