ABOUT
Thirty years at the table where business meets the state.
From Andersen's Chicago office to the Vice Chairmanship of Accenture India; from IBM's deal rooms in Singapore to the Economic Development Board of Andhra Pradesh — Krishna G V Giri has spent his career building the practices, deals, and institutions that others now run.
250M
AADHAAR PHASE 1
$800M
LARGEST DEAL SHAPED
2×
REVENUE IN 12 MONTHS
SELECTED WORK — THE JOURNEY
Click a location · 1990 → present
Krishna G V Giri has spent over three decades at the intersection of business and government across the United States, Singapore, and India, working with heads of state across Asia Pacific. For five years he advised the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and served as Vice Chairman of the state's Economic Development Board — a tenure in which investment to the state doubled, landmark judgments secured Bhogapuram's international airport, and the state's case was made directly to global CEOs at Davos.
Previously, as Vice Chairman and Managing Partner of Accenture India's Health & Public Services practice, he co-founded a business that grew from nothing to $104 million in four years — and served as executive sponsor of Aadhaar from its inception, shaping the $800 million master service provider deal behind India's national identity program. As Senior Partner at IBM in Singapore he built a ~$500 million public sector practice across ASEAN and South Asia, including the $67 million World Bank-financed engagement with Vietnam's Ministry of Finance. As Chairman and CEO of Adrenalin eSystems, he doubled revenue in twelve months at 30% EBITDA — after fourteen loss-making years. For the Aadhaar program, he received the Computerworld 21st Century Achievement Award alongside the Government of India in Washington, DC.
He holds an MBA from IMD Lausanne and a master's from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, with executive studies at INSEAD and Yale. He is today a Partner at Giri & Lalit Law Offices and a Distinguished Fellow of the Pahlé India Foundation.
CAREER
Distinguished Fellow & Special Advisor, Pahlé India Foundation, New Delhi
- Special Advisor to Chairman Dr. Rajiv Kumar, former Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog
- Engages senior bureaucrats and ministers across states on data-driven policy
- Authoring a book on the state of Kerala and its policies, due 2026
Partner, Giri & Lalit Law Offices
- Solicitor for leading corporate matters
- Spearheaded the Perfect Day biotech acquisition — a billion-dollar plant secured through the NCLT process for a Temasek-funded company
Advisor to the Government of Andhra Pradesh · Vice Chairman, Economic Development Board
- Investment to the state doubled over five years
- Executed the legal strategy that won landmark judgments for Bhogapuram international airport
- Reviewed the state's capital strategy with BCG; fought polluting industries on sustainability
- Represented the state at Davos — IBM Chairman, BCG Chairman, and global PE firms
Chairman & CEO, Adrenalin · Principal Advisor, Intellect Design Arena
- Profitable turnaround after fourteen loss-making years: revenue doubled in 12 months at 30% EBITDA
- New go-to-market strategy; closed Bank of the Philippine Islands, Deloitte, and other marquee pursuits
- Branding strategy with Ogilvy & Mather and The Economist
Counsel & advisory roles
- Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan law firm · Advisor, NEC India · Board of Governors, IIIT Kanchipuram
Vice Chairman & Managing Partner, Accenture India H&PS · Managing Partner APAC, Singapore
- Co-founded and built India's Health & Government practice from scratch to $104M in four years
- Executive sponsor of Aadhaar from inception — shaped the $800M master service provider deal; delivered Phase 1 for 250 million citizens
- Led the India Post mega-transformation: 150,000 post offices, nine RFPs including core banking
- Scaled the APAC management consulting practice to $200M; growth & strategy across an $800M business
- National healthcare strategy for the Government of India; $5B FAB investment evaluation
Senior Partner, IBM Global Business Services — ASEAN & South Asia, Singapore
- Built the regional public sector & supply chain practice to ~$500M with double-digit market share
- Partner-in-charge, Singapore Ministry of Defence — eight major transformation deals in six years
- Shaped and won the $67M World Bank-financed deal with Vietnam's Ministry of Finance
- Co-created the SMU–SingHealth Innovation Centre; IBM Golden Circle and 100% Club
Associate Partner, Mitchell Madison Group (by McKinsey partners), San Francisco
- Engagement Partner, supply chain & e-procurement strategy; led the West Coast practice
- Designed the strategic sourcing diagnostic toolkit; published in iSource
Senior Manager, Andersen Consulting, Chicago
- Business and IT strategy for Monsanto, GATX, Anheuser-Busch, and Campbell Taggart
- SAP R/3 go-lives for Monsanto and Cleveland Steel
WRITING — INCOMING DISPATCHES · GIRI, K.G.V. ▊
NEW DELHI, MAR 18 2026 (THE WEEK) —
INDIA'S DATA CENTRE BOOM HAS A POWER PROBLEM
India is racing to build the digital infrastructure of a data-hungry economy — but every new data centre arrives with a power and water bill the grid hasn't budgeted for. Writing with Payal Seth, Giri argues that India's data centre boom will stall unless energy planning is treated as digital-infrastructure planning, and sets out what policymakers and industry each need to do before the constraint becomes a crisis.
FULL DISPATCH → THEWEEK.IN ■
NEW DELHI, FEB 25 2026 (THE PIONEER) —
EASE OF DOING BUSINESS IN THE ALCOBEV SECTOR
Excise duties on alcoholic beverages are among the largest own-tax revenue sources Indian states have — yet the sector is governed by some of the least predictable policy in the economy. Co-authored with Abhishek Jha of the Pahlé India Foundation, this piece makes the fiscal case: a streamlined, transparent, industry-aligned excise regime is not a concession to business but a revenue strategy for states.
FULL DISPATCH → DAILYPIONEER.COM ■
NEW DELHI, SEP 06 2025 (OUTLOOK INDIA) —
FROM TAJ TO TECH: REIMAGINING INDIA'S GLOBAL TOURISM PLAYBOOK
India's monuments draw the world's admiration but not, proportionately, its travellers or their spending. Giri argues tourism should be treated as a serious jobs engine — and that getting there requires storytelling, technology, and policy innovation working together, from digital-first visitor experiences to the institutional plumbing that lets states compete for global tourism the way they compete for industrial investment.
FULL DISPATCH → OUTLOOKINDIA.COM ■
NEW DELHI, SEP 2023 (ET GOVERNMENT) —
EVERY COMPANY IS A DATA COMPANY — SO IS EVERY GOVERNMENT
The thesis is in the title: governments sit on some of the largest, most consequential data estates in existence, and should run them with the discipline of a data business. Drawing on two decades of e-governance delivery — from national ID to postal transformation — Giri lays out what it means for a state to treat data as core infrastructure rather than administrative exhaust.
FULL DISPATCH → ECONOMICTIMES.INDIATIMES.COM ■
NEW DELHI, DEC 2022 (ET GOVERNMENT) —
PUBLIC HEALTH DATA: A BOON TO HEALTHCARE POLICY FORMULATION
Health policy in India is too often written blind — not for lack of data, but for lack of systems that make the data usable. Building on his work delivering health data infrastructure for governments, from a World Bank-funded state health data warehouse to national healthcare strategy, Giri argues that public health data, properly assembled, is the single highest-leverage input available to healthcare policymakers.
FULL DISPATCH → ECONOMICTIMES.INDIATIMES.COM ■
CHENNAI, 2016–17 (PEOPLE MATTERS) —
ESSAYS ON TALENT AND DIGITAL HR
Written from the CEO's chair during the Adrenalin turnaround, this series of essays examines how digital HR platforms change what companies can know about their own talent — and what leaders should do with that knowledge. The archive covers human capital management, HR technology, and the culture mechanics of a high-performance turnaround.
FULL ARCHIVE → PEOPLEMATTERS.IN ■
SAN FRANCISCO, C. 2000 (iSOURCE) —
COLLABORATIVE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC VALUE NETWORKS
A series on B2B supply chains and e-procurement strategy from the first internet era, written as an Associate Partner at Mitchell Madison Group in San Francisco — arguing that supply chains were becoming collaborative value networks organized around the customer. The publication is long gone; the thesis aged rather well.
OUT OF PRINT — END OF WIRE ■