Mentors

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• Vinod Kumar
  President, India SME Forum

  Vinod Kumar is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, and strategic leader with extensive experience across investments, joint ventures, and cross-border collaborations in the electronics and telecommunications, media and publishing, industrial and consumer electronics, hospitality, and financial services sectors. He has played a pivotal role in supporting multinational corporations entering India through the foreign direct investment (FDI) route during multiple senior leadership engagements in corporate India. As a tech entrepreneur, Mr. Kumar spearheaded the development of an indigenously developed navigation and geographic information system (GIS)–based patented tracking technology, and successful exited from the business, including the patent-driven business models.

  Vinod currently leads a India-UK, HNI group’s investments in profitable, innovation-driven high growth, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) spanning India and the Middle East. An active investor and mentor, Mr. Kumar has supervised investments exceeding USD 135 million and has mentored more than 700 entrepreneurs. He is recognized for his expertise in risk profiling and in evaluating growth potential for seed and venture-stage investments, particularly in MSMEs developing innovative and disruptive technologies. His work includes extensive research and profiling of over 11,000 MSMEs across 29 industrial clusters in 11 sectors—including food processing, dairy, leather, pharmaceuticals, engineering, and automotive.

  Vinod Kumar, a former Entrepreneur and a Serial Investor in Innovative and Hi growth small and medium enterprises, serves as the Honorary President at the India SME Forum, ex officio member on the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises of the Government of India and Member of the Reserve Bank of India's Standing Advisory Committee on Flow of Institutional Credit (FIDD) to MSME Sector. He is also member of the Board of World Union of SMEs headquartered in San Marino as well as the Vice Chairman of the WUSME Permanent Commission of Economic & Financial Issues, for SMEs.

  Mr. Kumar’s deep experience in startups, joint ventures and collaborations, seed and equity financing, development finance, and MSME growth ecosystems has contributed to the design of cluster excellence templates, AI for MSME roadmaps, Universal Registration and Trade laws for Micro and Small Enterprises, innovative equity and growth capital strategies for MSMEs, across the world.

  Mr Kumar’s leadership is credited with the formulation of a highly successful India wide, ecosystem development, capacity-building and acceleration framework for MSMEs at the India SME Forum.

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