Pankaj Rai has succeeded Deep Thomas as the Group Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Aditya Birla Group Management Pvt. Ltd. Rai was previously working with Wells Fargo as the Senior Vice President Strategy. Thomas, on the other hand, has now moved on to Nomura as the Group Data Officer.
Rai has over 25 years of experience and specialises in analytics, strategic planning, risk management, operations and technology. At his last stint, he was entrusted with establishing digital capabilities to enable Wells Fargo’s channels and an internal consulting team to drive global programs. As per Rai, in his new role at Aditya Birla Group, he would be “enabling the analytics maturity journey as also creating products & platforms that can be scaled across the group and beyond.”
In one of his earlier stints, Pankaj was working with the India President’s office and managed all strategic and corporate planning-related initiatives of Dell in India. In this role, he was responsible for helping Dell diversify and grow its footprint in India as well as represent Dell outside in industry forums.
Pankaj is an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and B.Tech from IIT. Prior to joining Dell, Pankaj was Head, Program Management Office at Standard Chartered Bank in their Singapore regional office wherein he helped grow their shared service centres in India and Malaysia.
In his professional career spanning 25 years, Pankaj started as a management consultant and then went on to work in the financial services industry in India wherein he worked with ICICI and GE Capital in a variety of roles covering sales, risk management, 6 sigma & operations.
Aditya Birla Group started its Group Data and Analytics function(GDNA) in 2017, with the agenda to work closely with various business divisions on strategizing and delivering impactful insights by leveraging digital analytics. The Aditya Birla Group operates across multiple sectors and amid its diversity — it’s the GDNA cell that is providing a clear route to value creation by building strategic digital assets which are delivering significantly higher returns.
