Bio Sketch

Kiran Tharanath is a globally appointed Senior Director at Samsung Electronics, currently leading Customer Strategy, Technology, and Solutions across the South West Asia region. After living and working in South Korea for 18 years, he was personally appointed by Samsung Top Management to serve as an expatriate and representative of Korean headquarters to India—making him the first ethnic non-Korean ever entrusted with this role in the company’s history.

Kiran’s career has spanned diverse functions within Samsung, from deep R&D and product innovation to international sales, strategy, and global business development. He began his journey at Samsung HQ, contributing to the evolution of mobile telecommunications, including the development and commercialization of GSM (2G), WCDMA (3G), and WiMAX/LTE (4G) technologies. Over time, he transitioned from engineering leadership into commercial roles, helping Samsung forge strategic partnerships and close high-stakes negotiations across global markets.

His portfolio includes multi-million to billion-dollar contracts across North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, CIS, and Asia. He has led customer engagements and C-suite negotiations for both Fortune 500 companies and public sector organizations. Fluent in five languages—including native-level Korean—he brings rare cross-cultural fluency and commercial precision to global relationship building and high-impact execution.

Kiran was ranked among the top 0.02% of engineers in India and was selected as one of only twelve individuals globally for the Samsung Global Scholarship Program (GSP) in 2007. His academic credentials reflect a consistent record of excellence. He holds dual Executive MBAs—both awarded summa cum laude—from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and the Graduate School of Business at SKKU, Korea. He also holds a Master of Science by Research in Telecommunication Networks from Seoul National University and a Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IIIT-Hyderabad—both conferred with highest academic distinction.

Beyond his professional work, Kiran is deeply committed to mentoring future leaders, exploring cultures through travel (50+ countries to date), and expressing creativity through music. He remains driven by one core belief: that leadership, at its best, combines clarity of purpose, humility in execution, and the courage to cross boundaries—geographic, functional, and human.