It seems as though Ashish Singh has been preparing for his current role for his entire professional life. Singh, a Bain & Company partner, is opening the firm's first full-fledged consulting office in India; although the doors to the new Gurgaon office don't officially open until July, Singh's team began serving multinationals and India-based clients from the office earlier this year.
The office is close to Delhi, where Singh was raised. He eventually entered Harvard University, from which he graduated with honors. During summers, Singh would return to India and engage in his passion for trekking and mountain-climbing; he's topped 18,000-foot peaks and participated in expeditions to much higher mountains.
He returned to India in the mid-1980s, working for Citibank to help establish the company's consumer services presence in the country. After four years with Citibank, Singh's entrepreneurial instincts and his passion for the outdoors drove him to launch Quest Tours, an adventure travel firm that guided customers up mountains, down rivers, and along bumpy Jeep trails in the country's Himalayan region.
Singh returned to the U.S. — and Harvard, for his MBA — and then joined Bain, which has conducted projects in India since 1989. In 1994, Singh took on his first project in his home country, and he also spent most of 1996 there working on an engagement for a multinational. Bain opened a capability center, which supports global clients with research and analysis, in India in 2004.
The new consulting office will expand upon Bain's previous work in India. And Singh's previous work at Bain seems an ideal match for his new role. He co-founded three of Bain's practices: software, media & entertainment, and pharmaceutical.
The challenge of opening a new consulting office in a familiar place offers Singh the opportunity to blaze a new entrepreneurial trail while fulfilling a lifelong desire.
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