Dr Nirmalya Kumar is the Lee Kong Chian Professor of Marketing at Singapore Management University (SMU). A business and marketing expert, Nirmalya is an author of numerous books, including the forthcoming Clash: Amazon versus Walmart. He has published for the Journal of Marketing Research and Harvard Business Review.
Recognized as one of the world’s leading thinkers on strategy and marketing, Nirmalya has worked with Fortune 500 companies and has served as a board director at major India conglomerates such as ACC, Ambuja Cement, Bata India, Tata Chemicals, Ultratech, and Zensar. Thrice included in Thinkers50, the biannual listing of the top 50 management thinkers in the world. He is the recipient of the “Global Village Award” for his contributions to the business community's understanding of globalization and emerging markets.
Previously, he headed strategy at the Tata Group. Nirmalya has also taught at Columbia University, Harvard Business School, IMD (Switzerland), London Business School, and Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern University). He has also been a visiting fellow at BITSoM, Cambridge Judge Business School, Indian School of Business, and INSEAD.
Dr Kumar received his bachelor’s degree in commerce from Calcutta University. He obtained his MBA from the University of Illinois and PhD from Northwestern University.