D Shivakumar

Shivakumar or Shiv as he is popularly known is currently Group Executive president at Aditya Birla group for Strategy and Business development. He joined the ABG group in January 2018.

Prior to this, Shiv was Chairman and CEO for PepsiCo for four years and before that with Nokia as CEO for India and later Emerging markets for nearly a decade. Shiv has been a CEO for half his career and was one of the youngest CEOS in India. Shiv worked in HUL for a number of years, mostly in marketing. Shiv has worked with over 50 brands in his career and seen many business transformations.

Shiv writes and teaches regularly on Innovation, leadership, Followership, Business Models, Digitization etc. across the leading business schools in the world.

Shiv is an avid sports watcher, a great fan of Manchester United and Barcelona football teams, John Mc Enroe and Roger Federer in tennis.

Shiv is a believer in giving back to society. Shiv has been on the Board of Governors of IIM Ahmedabad between 2012 and 2017 as well as being on the Board of Godrej Consumer products Board between 2009 and 2017. He was the President of the All India Management Association in 2012-2013. He was Chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association from 2014 to 2019 and Chairman of the Advertising Standards Council of India for 2018-19. He is currently on the board of XLRI and IIM Udaipur.

Shiv has been awarded many times in his career – Best CEO, Best brand builder, for leadership, for Turnaround et al. The awards most dear to him are the two distinguished Alumnus awards he got from IIT Madras and IIM Calcutta. He is one of twenty people in India to have distinguished alumnus awards from both IIT and IIM.

Shiv is married to Hamsini, who runs her own brand, innovation and Semiotics consulting company. Shiv is the best selling author of THE RIGHT CHOICE, a book on career dilemmas.