PROFILE
SUNIL KANT MUNJAL

An intrepid entrepreneur, investor and recently turned author with multiple passions and interests, Sunil Kant Munjal, is the youngest son of Brijmohan Lall Munjal, the Founder of the Hero Group. Besides setting up many new enterprises and providing strategic inputs for the Hero Group as Chairman of Hero Corporate Service, he was also one of the Managing Directors of Hero Cycles, and subsequently the Joint Managing Director of Hero MotoCorp (formerly Hero Honda). As the Chairman of Hero Enterprise now, he oversees diverse service and manufacturing businesses such as insurance distribution, steel-making, real estate, corporate training and an active Investment Office. The Investment Office has made strategic investments in several areas ranging from e-commerce to hospitality. He also supports start-ups in digital learning, community transportation, healthcare, women empowerment, education, financial services, consumer-facing businesses, etc. The Investment Office runs a portfolio of structured debt, public market investments and private equity investments in India and global markets.

He has been actively involved in corporate governance and policy advocacy for many decades. He sits on the boards of DCM Shriram, Escorts, Bharti Foundation, Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs and the advisory boards of Coca Cola India, Indian Angels Network Fund and UK India Business Council (UKIBC). He has also been on the boards of IIT Ropar, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) and PNB Gilts Ltd and has chaired the board of Punjab Technical University. A key advocate of economic reforms, he is a former president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the All India Management Association (AIMA) and continues to be involved with them. He also chaired the board of MEPSC, a government and industry supported skills’ initiative to create a professionally competent workforce for India. He has been on the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade & Industry and in the 1990s; he was a member of the Narasimham Committee that scripted India’s banking and financial sector reforms. He was also on the Taskforce on Indirect Taxes (Kelkar Committee) that charted India’s first roadmap for indirect taxes. He was also a member of the RBI’s commission for labour reforms, and on the committee that defined roles for bank board members.

Sunil Kant Munjal is passionate about education, healthcare and skill development. He has co-founded BML Munjal University, a unique higher education venture that pioneers next practices in knowledge delivery and student development and is the President of the Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, in Ludhiana, which has been ranked as a leading non-metro hospital and the number one private teaching hospital in North India. He also chairs the BCM Foundation, set up in memory of his grandfather, which runs schools and colleges across Punjab. He chairs the governing body of his almamater, The Doon School, considered to be India’s leading high school. He also sits on the boards of IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA), Indian School of Business (ISB), Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) and University of Tokyo.

Sunil Kant Munjal continues his life-long love affair with the arts and literature. He set up the Ludhiana Sanskritik Samagam, a cultural body to promote the performing arts in Ludhiana. He has co-authored a coffee table book, All the World’s A Stage that chronicles experiences with India’s finest music and theatre artistes who performed at Ludhiana. He then founded the Serendipity Arts Foundation which runs unique education programmes, residencies and research in art and culture, besides making all art-form accessible to people and organising an annual festival- Serendipity Art Festival, that has become one of the world’s largest multi-disciplinary arts festivals in terms of scale, quality and curation of all art forms. He has also chronicled the incredible saga of Hero’s founders in a book- The Making of Hero, which featured amongst India’s prominent bestsellers for several months and won the Business Book of the Year Award at Tata Literature Live! Festival 2020.

India’s leading magazine India Today chose him as one of the “Faces of the Millennium” for business. In 2016, he won the Jehangir Ghandy Medal for Social and Industrial Peace. In the same year, he was conferred a D. Lit by SRM University, Chennai, and became a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Directors. In 2018, Punjab University conferred on him the Udyog Rattan Award for role in the state’s industrial development. He also received the GlobScot Award from the Scottish Government in 2012 for being one of the prominent employers in Scotland.