Philips CEO Krishna Kumar A Promoted as the Head of Healthcare Business

The chief executive and also managing director of Philips India, Mr. Krishna Kumar A has been promoted and given the responsibility to lead parent company Royal Philip’s recent and rising business segment in the field of healthcare vertical, as disclosed by two senior executives of the company. Mr. Kumar will report to and work under Frans van Houten, the global CEO of the company.

43-year-old Krishna will carry on the role and responsibilities as MD of Philips India till the month of December, and then afterward will relocate to the Netherlands to concentrate on the development of positive customer relations along with providing healthcare products at par with the professional level of the market. According to the company’s executives with the request for maintenance of anonymity, the areas of focus for the company are home monitoring, mental vitality, handheld-diagnostic, end-of-care solutions, digital pathology solutions, and geriatric care.

At the moment the company has not publicly announced the new MD for handling and managing Indian Operations. No name was suggested either on the day of the press conference on Tuesday and no response had been given to electronic queries sent to the company via email.

The promotion of Krishna to take on the responsibilities in the senior global role is the third consecutive move from Philips’ India where the CEOs of Indian Origin of the company have been chosen.

The first in this regard was Mr. Murali Sivaraman, who is currently the head of Philips’s lighting solution company and looks after the company’s operations in the Asia-Pacific region, Brazil and China, and works from Singapore. Sivaram was succeeded by Rajeev Chopra, located in Brussels and working as the head of the home lighting division of Philips’.

In a similar manner, one of the senior executives of Philips’ India, Nirupam Sahay, who managed the lighting business of the company in India was moved and relocated to Hong Kong in order to head the consumer lamp segment of the company.

Krishna switched from Johnson & Johnson to Philips India in the year 2010 and has degrees and qualifications from top B schools like IIM Ahmedabad and Kellogg School of Management.

He joined the company in the capacity of head of healthcare business and in the year 2013, he was appointed as the managing director. These changes are coming at a crucial time for Royal Philips’ as the company is focusing to streamline its operations; the company has a rich heritage of 123 years in the lighting business and is now putting the spotlight on establishing itself as a leading seller of medical equipment along with products from consumer lifestyle categories.

The operations of both the company will be independent of each other. Coincidentally the team which is responsible for this makeover is headed by Abhijeet Bhattacharya, who earlier worked as the chief financial officer for Philips’s healthcare. Although there is a positive incline in appointments of Indians for top-level global roles in relation to most valued consumer electronics brands such as LG, Sony, or Samsung there is still a long way to go.

To name a few, Pranav Mistry spearheads the think tank team for Samsung and is research director for the company and is based in the States. Recently the sales head for Sony India, Sunil Nayyar was relocated and moved to North America to take over as the director for Sony’s television, home theatre, and sound business.