Bio Sketch

Kiran Tharanath is a Senior Director in the Global Sales and Marketing Team at Samsung Electronics Headquarters, South Korea. 

In his current role, he handles major global accounts  and is tasked with business development and sales as well as creating strategic partnerships across verticals in both Commercial and Public Sectors. He was appointed to this position by the President of Samsung to help develop the future business of Samsung and often leads critical business negotiations with C-Suite, on behalf of the organization. As a part of his career in Sales, Strategy and BD, he has often led business negotiations and has won multiple deals (U$000M - U$0B) with customers and also negotiated/executed various partnership agreements with leading global companies spanning North/Latin America, Europe, CIS, Asia, Australia and the Middle East.

Before assuming his current role in business, he played a leading role in the Software Development division at Samsung Headquarters, covering diverse technologies and products including GSM (2G), WCDMA (3G) and WiMAX/LTE (4G). He also served as Samsung's Brand Ambassador, directly appointed by the Chief Marketing Officer of Samsung Electronics.

Ranked in the top 0.02% among the Engineers in India, he was one of the 12 people selected from all over the world as a Samsung Global Scholar (Samsung GSP) in 2007, the reason for his movement to Korea. He has native level versatility in Korean (원어민 수준 한국어 말하기/읽기/쓰기 가능) and is proficient in five languages. He is a South Korean citizen and holds an Overseas Citizen status in India. (귀화로 인한 대한민국 시민권 보유자).

Kiran holds two MBA degrees (both Summa Cum Laude) from Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and Graduate School of Business at SKKU, Korea. He also holds a Master of Science by Research degree from Seoul National University, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a major in Telecommunication Networks. He is the first employee in the history of Samsung Electronics to have been awarded corporate dual sponsorship for both his MS and Executive MBA. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree (Summa Cum Laude) in Electronics and Communications Engineering. 

In his free time, he volunteers, plays the guitar and is an avid traveler (~45 countries to date).