Janmejaya Sinha
Chairman of Asia-Pacific
The Boston Consulting Group
Excellence in Financial ServicesWhile every consultant is aware of the emerging growth opportunities in markets like China and India, few have the passion of Janmejaya Sinha. He was recently tapped to serve as Boston Consulting Group’s Chairman of Asia-Pacific. Before that, he managed the firm’s operations in India, which quintupled in revenue and partner headcount during his five years at the helm. Specifically, he was able to build a dominant financial services practice, building largely on his own personal background as a key central banker in India.
When Sinha took over BCG’s India practice in 2004, it consisted of about 10 partners and only 40 total consultants. By the time he was promoted last year, it had 18 partners and about 200 total consultants.
“We have great partner cohesion. In the last ten years, one partner left to start a solar energy company and another left to join a planning commission,” Sinha says. “We had extraordinary partner retention. And that’s very important to why we are so successful in building up a very strong local client base.”
He shares that in India, 85 percent of the firm’s revenue comes from local clients. “It has been a lot of fun working with unlimited aspirations. We have one client that in March of 2003 had revenue of about $100 million. Now they generate about $4.2 billion. It’s a market with that kind of opportunity.”
While he has reason to brag, he speaks with profound humility. “Now, I don’t, for a second, suggest we did that. But to think that we can be part of that kind of growth story is just amazing. It builds a lot of trust when you’re working with companies on this journey of rapid growth. Many of our clients are growing by 60 percent to 70 percent per year, ” Sinha says. “Asia Pacific couldn’t be a more energizing place to be.”
Domestic consumer spending is “out of control”, he says. In 2003, there were about 10 million cell phones sold in India. Now, he estimates that there are about 450 million.
“The only constraint to growth is in our imagination, not in the opportunity,” he says. “This is a consultant’s dream.”
—Jess Scheer
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