Office of Industry Partnerships > Kaushik Pillalamarri

Kaushik Pillalamarri

Executive Fellow and Chief Strategist

Kaushik Pillalamarri is a global strategist, two-time CEO, entrepreneur, and technology executive with a record of commercializing novel ideas, building ventures and growth engines, leading major M&A, and forging alliances with Big Tech, Fortune 500 companies, and the United Nations. Known for integrity, trust-building, and results, he has advanced innovation, profitability, customer experience, and societal impact across multinational, mid-sized, and startup companies.

With experience across six continents, he has built high-performing teams and led multi-billion-dollar initiatives across technology, telecom, manufacturing, finance, transportation, agribusiness, consumer goods, retail, education, and government markets. As CEO of Smartiply, he sold the startup to Wistron, later serving as Wistron’s Chief Product Officer and Strategy Advisor. As Group CEO of Universal Industries, he led a major agribusiness turnaround and launched two nutritional food businesses.

As SVP and inaugural Head of Wireless Data & Devices at Reliance in India, he expanded mobility, machine-to-machine, and cloud solutions. During 13 years at Verizon, he led large-enterprise complex markets, built its largest telecom e-business ecosystem, modernized network infrastructure, and executed significant M&A transactions.

At Purdue, he serves on the Advisory Council of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, advancing trusted technology adoption across government, business, and civil society. He also serves as a Strategic Advisor and Consultant to Purdue University, supporting strategic partnerships, growth opportunities, and commercialization of Purdue innovations.

Kaushik holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship from SMU Cox School of Business; MS and BS degrees in Computer Science from Kansas State University; and executive certifications from MIT, Harvard, Wharton, Cornell, and Kellogg in strategy, disruptive technologies, growth engines, and leadership.

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