NILESH THAKKER

Nilesh Thakker is President for the Globalization Excellence practice, spearheading the Global Engineering Strategy team out of Zinnov’s US office. With a remarkable career spanning more than 35 years, Nilesh has deep expertise and experience across domains including Globalization Excellence, Engineering and IT Excellence, Product Development and Innovation, Global Capability Centers, Global Talent and building high performing Centers of Excellence globally.

As the head of the Globalization Excellence practice, Nilesh advises Fortune 500 enterprises as well as high-growth companies on setting up high performing Global Centers of Excellence (GCoEs), optimizing their global footprint, and reprioritizing their technology investments to drive cutting-edge innovation. He actively works with clients across the industry spectrum including Retail, Travel, Healthcare, e-Commerce, Digital Advertising, B2B Software, and BFSI to name a few. A seasoned leader, he has been responsible for shaping the Global Centers of Excellence (GCoE) business through a data-driven approach and a pulse on the latest market trends.

In addition to this, he has been a frequent contributor to various thought leaderships and authored several Strategic POVs on internal and external platforms. He believes in building an organizational culture that is made up of passionate and driven individuals, who are not afraid to challenge the status quo. He recently wrote for FastCompany and Spiceworks and was quoted in Forbes.

During his previous stint as General Manager and Head of Operations at Intuit India, Nilesh was instrumental in setting up and transforming the India Development Center into one of the best in the country, with single digital attrition and successful hiring and retention of top talent, propelling it to become one of ‘India’s Best Companies to Work For.’ Prior to that, he has held eminent leadership positions including Chief Technology & Products Officer in inPowered and VP Engineering in Kayak.com. He has also worked at Sitemetrics, ORC and EOIS.