Naresh Kumra
Naresh Kumra is currently President of the Asia Pacific Division at Belden. Belden is an NYSE-listed [ticker BDC] 107-year old supplier of high-speed cabling and signal transmission solutions. Belden products are used in a variety of end markets including, industrial automation, data networking, consumer electronics, broadcasting, transport and defense. Belden’s annual revenues are $2 billion and the company employs over 7,000 Associates. Asia Pacific division has annual sales of $350 million. Mr. Kumra joined Belden in March 2006 as Vice President of Business Development. In this role, Mr. Kumra led a global team through development of the new strategic plan for Belden. The strategic plan has been widely communicated internally and externally, and the company is currently focused on execution of this plan, and has already made significant progress. Mr. Kumra introduced new pricing techniques in the company, that helped expand Belden gross-margins by over 500 basis-points. Mr. Kumra also launched a new M&A funnel process, and identified/evaluated several acquisition targets, one of which was successfully closed in March 2007. Mr. Kumra relocated to New Delhi, India in September 2006 to assume his current role as President of Asia Pacific division. Since then, Mr. Kumra has been focused on transforming the $50 million sales operation in Asia to now a $400 million business with strong local capability in engineering, manufacturing, and sales. Over the past 2+ years, the Asia Pacific team has launched several initiatives to drive organic growth and gain market share, as well as, significantly improve profitability. A complete overhaul of the go-tomarket model, from a passive product-sales focus to a proactive end-customer focused demand-creation model, has resulted in organic sales growth of 2.5x market growth rate, and over 1200bps improvement in gross margins of the legacy business. In March 2007, the Asia Pacific division acquired and successfully integrated a $220 million business in China. Currently, Mr. Kumra is leading a revision of company’s Asia strategy with aspirations to achieve $1 billion in sales in next 3-5 years. Before joining Belden, Mr. Kumra was Associate Principal with McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, in New York area. During over 6 years at McKinsey, Mr. Kumra worked primarily with companies in specialty materials, hi-tech, telecom, and general industrial sectors on a variety of strategic and operational issues. Mr. Kumra spent a significant time working with well-known US private equity funds on their investments. Mr. Kumra was recognized as an expert on organic growth and innovation, and was invited to speak at industry conferences. Mr. Kumra started his career with Schlumberger, a multi-billion dollar NYSElisted company [ticker SLB], in their electronic products business in France. During over 6 years, Mr. Kumra held several positions in product development, marketing, and manufacturing in France and in India. Mr. Kumra setup and ran Schlumberger’s first electronic assembly facility in Asia, outside of New Delhi. Mr. Kumra holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science & Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, and was in the top 0.1% of engineering applicants in India for admission to the highly reputed school. Mr. Kumra qualified as a National Talent Scholar in India, and scored 99%-ile worldwide on Advanced GRE test in Computer Science. Mr. Kumra has an MBA from the Darden Business School at University of Virginia where he was a William Shermet scholar, and where he received the Faculty award for academic excellence. Mr. Kumra scored 99%-ile on GMAT for admission to US business schools. Mr. Kumra has lived and worked on three continents, and speaks 5 languages, including, English, French, Hindi and Punjabi. He is currently taking Mandarin language classes in Shanghai. Forced to give-up flying due
Email: NareshKumra@gmail.com