Anil Kumar

Anil Kumar (born 1958) is an Indian-American former senior partner and director at management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he co-founded McKinsey's offices in Silicon Valley and India and created its Internet practice (representing a quarter of McKinsey's business at the time) among others.

Kumar is additionally the co-founder of the Indian School of Business with Rajat Gupta and the creator of two different kinds of outsourcing.

He graduated from IIT Bombay in India, Imperial College in the UK, and The Wharton School in the US.

Kumar began his career at Hewlett Packard as a product manager before joining McKinsey and Company in 1986 as one of the earliest Indian-Americans at the consultancy.

In 1988 he co-founded McKinsey's offices in Silicon Valley with a partner, growing the office "from two people to approximately 35" by 1992.

In 1993 as a partner he founded McKinsey's office in New Delhi, which along with the Mumbai office co-founded the consultancy in India.

In India he pioneered the concepts of Knowledge Process Outsourcing and Business Process Outsourcing and became the protégé of then-managing director (chief executive) Rajat Gupta.

Kumar returned to the United States to found and lead McKinsey's Internet practice during the dot-com bubble.

"Under [Kumar's] leadership, McKinsey's e-commerce practice grew to represent a full 25-30% of the firm's revenues," court documents revealed, though Kumar was blamed for the evaporation of this business in the subsequent dot-com collapse.

He and Gupta briefly created a program to allow the firm to accept stock in lieu of consulting fees.

Kumar was also Chairman of the Knowledge Center and Chairman of the Asia Center.

He was a director and corporate officer of the firm.

He lived and worked from multiple offices in New Delhi, New York, and Silicon Valley, traveling over thirty thousand miles a month.

He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Young Presidents' Organization, a founding charter member of TiE, and was the United States chairman of India's largest business lobby, the Confederation of Indian Industry.

Criticism of Kumar centered around his close relationship with Gupta and a perception of arrogance.

According to The Financial Times, "the two operated as a forceful double-act to secure business for McKinsey, win access in Washington and build a brotherhood of donors around the Hyderabad-based ISB and a handful of social initiatives."

Also according to the Times, "as much as Mr Kumar was admired for his business ability and sharpness, he also drew fire for what was seen as his arrogance."

Kumar maintained an intentionally low profile outside McKinsey until an October 2009 arrest in conjunction with an ongoing and wide-ranging US governmental investigation into insider trading.

Former mentor Rajat Gupta was later arrested by the FBI in a related case, prompting inquiries into McKinsey's senior leadership and business model.

As of December 2009, Kumar was no longer at the consultancy.

In 2010 he pleaded guilty to insider trading in a dramatic "descent from the pinnacle of the business world."

He was the government's first cooperator and most important witness "in two of the most important securities fraud trials in history" against close friends and business partners Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire founder of the Galleon Group family of hedge funds, and Rajat Gupta, the former head of McKinsey and Company and a board member of Goldman Sachs and Procter and Gamble.

Rajaratnam and Gupta were both convicted in separate high-profile criminal trials.

In January 2010 he pleaded guilty to insider trading charges and was "the government’s star witness" in March 2011 against billionaire friend and Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam (United States v. Rajaratnam).

In the sprawling case his involvement was unusual; according to a Reuters blog, "He’s the only informant who could be considered even more successful than Raj was, at least professionally if not in terms of raw cash. Raj had money, more money than he really knew what to do with, but Kumar had much more societal acceptance and prestige."

He settled with the SEC in May 2010 for $2.8 million, the amount after gains he received from Rajaratnam through a Swiss bank account in a domestic worker's name.

He was sentenced in 2012 by Judge Denny Chin to two years of probation in exchange for testimony against Rajaratnam and Gupta.

Chin stated that "greed wasn't the motive in [Kumar's] case" and that "this was aberrational conduct ... Mr. Kumar has led a law-abiding and productive life."

Federal prosecutors called Kumar "one of the best and most important cooperating witnesses" they had ever worked with.

In 2015, an investigation noted that Mr. Kumar had illegally collected funds from insider trading in offshore accounts in the name of his domestic worker, Manju Das.

The investigation alleged that Das had no knowledge of these accounts, which were created with identity documents falsified by Mr. Kumar; and that Mr. Kumar had paid Ms. Das far below minimum wage for several years in violation of US law.

Kumar graduated first in his class from The Doon School, an elite high school in India, and ranked among the top 100 students across India for admission to the competitive Indian Institute of Technology colleges.

He graduated third in his class from IIT Bombay with a degree in mechanical engineering, writing a thesis on renewable energy.

Kumar attended Imperial College at the University of London on "the equivalent of the Rhodes scholarship" sponsored by Cecil Rhodes's De Beers Company.

He became the first student to complete Imperial's two-year course in applied mechanics in 10 months, and also graduated first in his class.

Kumar attended business school at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a self-designed major on the management of technology and international business.

Kumar was a "star senior partner," and "one of McKinsey’s most senior employees [and] brightest stars."

He co-founded McKinsey's offices in Silicon Valley and India and created and led the firm's business in three different areas of Internet companies (representing 25-30% of McKinsey's worldwide revenues at its peak), outsourcing, and intrapreneurship.

He was the protégé of former chief executive Rajat Gupta, though he was blamed for the collapse of McKinsey's e-commerce initiatives after the dot-com collapse and never ran in the elections for managing partner (chief executive).

Gupta and Kumar also co-founded the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India.