Shailendra "Shail" Kumar is the author of Building Golden India: How to Unleash India's Vast Potential and Transform Its Higher Education System. Now. (2015) — making the case that higher education has a transformative impact on individuals, societies, and nations, and that the path for national transformation runs through higher education.
The book reached the highest levels of national leadership when Nobel Laureate Prof. Randy Schekman presented it to India's Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in 2017. Shail engaged directly with senior policymakers across the Prime Minister's Office, NITI Aayog, and the National Education Policy drafting committee — and many of the book's key recommendations were later reflected in India's National Education Policy (NEP 2020). He founded Nalanda 2.0, a non-partisan higher education think tank, to continue advancing these ideas.
The conviction behind Building Golden India did not remain on the page. In 2018, Shail envisioned and spearheaded Ekagrid — an initiative to build a next-generation multidisciplinary research university in India, inspired by institutions such as Stanford, MIT, and ancient India's Nalanda, and grounded in an AI+X model that leverages artificial intelligence across disciplines to drive societal-scale transformation. He convened a 40+ member Global Advisory Board and AI Advisory Council spanning five countries and 11 of the world's top 25 research universities, developed a $1B+ campaign strategy, and engaged 50+ philanthropists on proposals ranging from $25M to $150M. Ekagrid secured a landmark memorandum of understanding with the Government of Karnataka for 200 acres of land in Bengaluru and the enabling University Act.
This initiative directly catalyzed the creation of the Indian AI Research Organization (IAIRO), envisioned as India's ISRO for AI.
The ideas in Building Golden India were themselves shaped by Shail's years as a senior advancement leader at two of America's leading research universities. At UC Berkeley, as a senior member of the $3B The Campaign for Berkeley team, he secured $30M+ in seven- and eight-figure gifts and grants, and partnered with deans to launch an entrepreneurship initiative in the College of Letters & Science and establish the UC Berkeley–IIT Kharagpur collaboration. At UC San Diego, he led development strategy and teams across seven colleges and schools managing $35M+ in annual fundraising goals, co-led pre-planning for a $1–1.5B campaign, and successfully concluded the $50M Invent the Future campaign.
Before higher education, Shail spent over fifteen years in Silicon Valley — as co-founder and CEO of two ventures, and in progressively senior leadership roles in corporate strategy, global operations, business development, and finance at Applied Materials, Lam Research, and FMC Corporation.
A long-time leader in the global IIT alumni community, Shail co-founded the PanIIT alumni movement in the US, leading to the creation of PanIIT USA and PanIIT India — today a unified global network of 500,000+ IIT alumni. He served as President of the IIT Kharagpur Foundation (USA) and is the recipient of IIT Kharagpur's Distinguished Service Award.
He holds a B.Tech (Honors) in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington.
Shail resides in Silicon Valley with his wife and two children. A practitioner of Vipassana and Yoga, he is an avid reader and enjoys traveling, spending time in nature, and being with family and friends.