Mr. Jacob Kurian
Partner, New Silk Route Advisors Pvt. Ltd.

Armed with a degree in Engineering (B.E. EEE) from National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli, along with an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur, Mr Kurian has worked with various establishments. He has been working for New Silk Route (NSR) Advisors since April 2007. His main area of focus at NSR is Private Equity opportunities in the Indian sub-continent.

Prior to joining NSR, Mr Kurian was one of the Partners in the India Consumer Growth Fund which took advantage of the opportunities created by strong consumption growth in the Indian economy. He also worked for the Tata Group as an officer of the Tata Administrative Service. In 1996, Mr Kurian became Chief Marketing Officer of the watch business at Titan. His team rejuvenated the flagging watch business with the launch of multiple new brands that are still India’s largest volume and youth watch brands.

In mid 2000, Mr Kurian was named COO and SVP of Tanishq, a fine jewellery business. He led a dramatic turnaround of this business, making it one of the fastest growing consumer franchises in the country. Mr Kurian engineered a multi-dimensional restructuring and repositioned Tanishq as a retail business with growing revenues and steadily increasing profits and cash flows at over 40% CAGR over the next three years. As President of the Indian operations of Laureate Inc, in 2003, he led the effort to establish India’s largest multi-disciplinary private university.

He was voted ‘Exceller of the Year’ – the outstanding graduating student by his class at business school. He also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from NITT in 2008.