Shailendra “Shail” Kumar is the Founder and President of Nalanda 2.0, a non-profit think tank dedicated to transforming India’s higher education system. He is the author of Building Golden India: How to Unleash India’s Vast Potential and Transform Its Higher Education System. Now. (2015).
Shail holds a B.Tech (Honors) in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington. A long-time leader in the global IIT alumni community, he co-founded the Pan-IIT alumni movement in the US that led to the creation of PanIIT USA and PanIIT India, and served as President of the IIT Kharagpur Foundation (USA). Shail is a recipient of IIT Kharagpur’s Distinguished Service Award.
He spent over fifteen years in Silicon Valley, where he was co-founder and CEO of two startups and held progressively senior leadership roles in corporate strategy, global operations & planning, business development, and finance at Fortune 500 companies such as Applied Materials, FMC Corporation, and Lam Research.
Transitioning to higher education leadership, Shail served in senior roles at two world-class research universities: UC Berkeley and UC San Diego. At UC San Diego, he led strategy and development teams of seven colleges and schools, co-led pre-planning for a $1–1.5 billion campaign, and successfully concluded the $50 million Invent the Future campaign. At UC Berkeley, he contributed to the $3 billion The Campaign for Berkeley and worked closely with multiple deans to launch an entrepreneurship initiative in the College of Letters & Science, and establish the UC Berkeley–IIT Kharagpur collaboration.
Building on these experiences, Shail turned his focus to India's higher education. His book, Building Golden India, offered a strategic blueprint for national transformation. The book reached the highest levels of government when Nobel Laureate Prof. Randy Schekman presented it to India’s Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi in 2017. Shail engaged with senior policymakers across the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), NITI Aayog, and the National Education Policy (NEP) drafting committee. Many of the book’s key ideas were later reflected in the NEP approved in 2020.
In 2018, Shail launched Ekagrid, an ambitious effort to build a world-class multidisciplinary research university in India, inspired by institutions such as Stanford and MIT, and ancient India's Nalanda. Ekagrid embodied the ideas articulated in Building Golden India.
Shail convened and led a 40+ member Global Advisory Board and AI Advisory Council, comprising leading academics and CXOs from five countries and affiliations with 11 of the world’s top 25 research universities. He partnered with them to shape institutional strategy, advance transformational philanthropy, and engage with leaders, including India's Prime Minister, Education Minister, the Prime Minister's Office, and leaders across seven state governments.
He also led the efforts to raise $150 million in seed funding, engaging more than 50 philanthropists with gift discussions ranging from $25 million to $150 million. They secured a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Karnataka for 200 acres of land in Bengaluru and for the University Act.
In 2019, Ekagrid chose to launch the university by first building a Global Institute for AI, and adopted the AI+X model—where “X” represents any discipline or sector in which AI can drive societal-scale transformation.
While Ekagrid was formally closed in 2024, it served as the direct catalyst for the creation of the Indian AI Research Organization (IAIRO)—envisioned as an ISRO for AI.
Shail currently 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.