Sumanta Gupta
Welcome to my personal website! This is where you can learn about me and my professional credentials and other interests.
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Professional Summary
Hello! I’m Sumanta — a passionate business leader with over two
decades of experience in driving managed service delivery, program
governance, consultative sales, revenue management, process
excellence and compliance. My career has spanned
consulting, SaaS, and market research and
I love collaborating with talented teams and customers from around
the world.
Process and operational excellence are
close to my heart: I’m a Simplilearn certified
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, with
additional certifications in
Anaplan Go-to-Market for Partners, Snowflake Technical Sales, and advanced Generative AI platforms.
These skills help me drive transformation, lead CXO conversations,
optimise resources, improve performance, and make sure programs
are delivered on time and in full.
I love setting up
new products and services in a consulting, SaaS and digital
context — taking ideas from the drawing board to fully managed
services. One of my strengths is uncovering the true strategic
objectives of a service or product idea and then tailoring the
value proposition, not just in theory but through practical,
impactful execution.
This approach has helped me
repeatedly earn opportunities to build and lead new service lines,
like the Intelligent Planning and Execution (Anaplan+Salesforce)
capability at ITC Infotech India Ltd. and the Retail Establishment
Surveys (RES) and Nielsen Store Observations (NSO) service lines
at Nielsen India. Recognition in the form of awards has been
deeply rewarding and keeps me motivated.
Until
recently, I headed the Global Capability Center of Apogee Indigo —
a Miami, USA based travel fintech startup with its GCC in
Calcutta, India. Working closely with the American founders, I
wore many hats: defining the Minimum Viable Product and
Go-to-Market strategy, partnering with technology teams,
identifying partners and vendors, vetting contracts and defining
the terms of engagement, and bringing together talented people
across sales, analytics, digital marketing, accounting, and more.
Whether I’m working on ensuring delivery and
operational excellence or making sure that our office meets the
highest standards of compliance and governance, I’m all about
finding smart solutions and supporting the team. I am also a
registered Director with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs,
Government of India (DIN 09595866).
But work is only
one side of my story. I’m a lifelong automotive enthusiast and a
member of Team-BHP, India’s leading forum for automotive lovers. Exploring new
roads, following the latest automotive innovations, and sharing
experiences with other automotive and travel enthusiasts is a
passion. Many of my travelogues have been published on the
Team-BHP website and you will also find some of them in the Blogs
section here.
I graduated in Computer Technology
from Yeshwantrao Chavan College of Engineering under Nagpur University and hold an MBA in Marketing from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India. I am also a proud alumnus of St. Mary's Orphanage & Day School, Calcutta, which is one of the many schools run worldwide by the Congregation of Christian Brothers of Ireland. I am also an Executive Committee member of the school's alumni association.
Home is Calcutta, India, where I live with my
better half Ananya and our parents. Outside the office, I love
travel, music, movies, sports-especially cricket, football
(soccer), tennis, and badminton. I am an avid quizzer too (with
quite a few wins under my belt!).
If you need someone
to lead customer conversations and execute on the delivery,
operations and process excellence side for digital transformation,
analytics, other consulting projects, or just want to talk, let’s
connect!
Value Delivered
I thrive on driving conversations with founders, CXOs and departmental heads to plan and execute transformation initiatives and solve varied business problems. I have, among other things, run the GCC for Apogee Indigo, as well as set up and led managed service lines and delivered critical assignments in digital transformation, analytics, market research and business process improvement. Mentioned below are some of the major initiatives I led or executed.
Apogee Indigo
Apogee Indigo is an American startup founded by Ric Roth and Mark Mechanic. It offers discounted dining and attractions at partner merchants, to tourists. I led global operations and headed the India GCC. In this role, I oversaw all business and technology functions including compliance and governance of the India office and executed the development and launch of the product in the first market, Miami, in October 2024.
Intelligent Planning and Execution
Handpicked by the company leadership to set up and lead the new capability that combined the best of Anaplan and Salesforce, I led capability and partner management including contracting, go-to-market, joint business plans and overall delivery governance and execution. I carried and exceeded revenue and margin targets and was also responsible for pre-sales and all marketing activities pertaining to the capability.
Performance Transformation for a UK based global MNC
I worked with the customer's CIO office at their London HQ to move an MS-Excel and pen and paper based TM&D system to an Intelligent Planning and Execution platform comprising Anaplan and Salesforce CPG Cloud, in a flagship digital transformation project executed across more than 40 countries, with each country having different needs and levels of process maturity.
Marketing Command Center for a leading CPG company
The Marketing Command Center was a key initiative to distil and analyze consumer feedback received through multiple channels and touch points to improve consumer connect, address issues, improve marketing campaigns and identify unmet consumer needs. It was envisaged to be like a lighthouse that would provide a 360 degree view on the 4Ps of marketing, in all the CPG categories in which the company operated. I was involved in the setup and execution of including leading the team that executed the digital marketing listening post for the Foods Division, which was a key pillar of the overall command center.
ISO 9001 and Lean Six Sigma Implementation
Even before my certification as a Lean Six Sigma Black
Belt, I worked on multiple BPI initiatives in many of the
companies I was employed with.
- Extensively used Six Sigma tools such as RACI, RCA and 5 Whys to solve business problems
- Optimized bench management through systematic tracking of project on-boarding and off-boarding combined with planned re-skilling and reassignment; eliminated revenue leakage through 100% on-time invoicing
- Got projects under IPE ISO 9001 certified and headed process excellence for the Data LOB at ITC Infotech
- Worked in a Green Belt role as the India lead for a global Six Sigma project to improve Retail Universe estimation methodology, while at Nielsen
- Worked with a LSSMBB on projects to reduce outstanding payments and improve employee attrition rates, while at Consulting Engineering Services (I) Pvt. Ltd.
Incepting and taking to market new services - CPG and Retail
Apart from Apogee Indigo and IPE, I was involved in the set up and execution of two new services for Nielsen India. The first was Retail Establishment Surveys (RES), which leveraged Nielsen's expertise in retail measurement services to provide actionable data to CPG and Retail companies that they could use to hone their distribution and store assortment strategy. The second was Nielsen Store Observations, which utilized visibility, positioning and planogramming principles to provide CPG customers an edge in store level customer preference.
