Abhishek Kumar earned his Ph.D. in Management from Pondicherry University where his doctoral work was on the creation of a scale to measure brand personality of media brands. He has completed his MBA from Bharathidasan Institute of Management (BIM), Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu and his undergraduate studies in economics from the University of Calcutta. He has also completed his Associateship from Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He has held several academic leadership positions prior to joining AnantU including Vice Chairman Placements, Vice Chairman Admissions and Chairman – Club Activities at BIM Trichy.

He has a rich experience of more than a decade in academia during which he has taught courses on brand management, leadership development, product design, philosophy of design and philosophy of architecture. Before becoming an academic, he served in leadership positions across media (ABP), banking (Yes Bank) and telecom (Bharti Airtel Ltd) industries for nearly a decade. He also had a brief stint as a gentleman cadet at National Defence Academy, Khadakvasla, Pune. As a business head in Yes Bank, he led his branch to the first position in CSR initiatives across all Yes bank branches in the country besides delivering on superior customer service to its customers and achieving healthy growth in the branch book size and branch profitability. Under his leadership, children’s newspaper, The Telegraph in Schools, won the world’s best children’s newspaper award by World Association of Newspapers (WAN) Paris while increasing its circulation and advertisement revenues substantially. He began his career as an HR professional with Bharti Airtel Limited where he was instrumental in rolling out HR interventions at regional offices of Mumbai, Gujarat, West Bengal and Corporate Office at Gurgaon.

He regularly conducts leader development programs for middle and senior-level managers and is a trained assessor of Thomas Profiling psychometric instrument and of conducting assessment centres by Saville Holdsworth London (SHL). He has written three popular case studies on leadership: A Tale of Two CEOs, Ganges – A Temporary Institution and The Telegraph Goes Nude. He has also written a book on leadership titled, ‘Three dimensions of Successful Leadership’ and has recently published an article titled ‘Humanistic Leadership in the Tata Group’ for the prestigious journal Cross-Cultural and Strategic Management from Emerald Publishing.

Abhishek Kumar is an Associate Professor, Director, Staff Training and Development and Lead Marketing and Communications at Anant National University. He teaches
Design Philosophies and Philosophy of Architecture.