Mr. Ravi Kant

Mr. Ravi Kant is the Chairman of the advisory board at Cynosure Consultants.

He is among the few distinguished personalities from the corporate world who is recognized across the globe, with nearly 50 years of corporate experience across extractive, consumer durable and automobile industries. The recipient of many awards, Mr. Kant is often invited to diverse global platforms to share his knowledge on marketing, business and leadership, as a keynote speaker.

Mr. Kant served in different strategic positions at TATA Motors (TML) since 1999, as Managing Director and CEO from 2005 to 2009 and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, until 2014. He played a significant role in making TML an admired and successful Indian multinational company, while helping increase its revenue from US$1.5 to US$ 39.0 bn during those 15 years. He engineered the creation of the ground-breaking, low cost passenger vehicle Nano and the commercial vehicle ACE which revolutionised the market. He is also credited with the acquisition of Daewoo trucks of Korea as well as the iconic British brands Jaguar and Land Rover. He has also chaired and held seats on several TATA company boards viz. TATA Industries, Voltas, TATA Advance Materials Ltd, Jaguar Land Rover, TATA Daewoo, TATA Motors (Spain & Thailand), TATA Cummins etc.  

Mr. Kant played a key role in turning around a loss making scooter company (LML Vespa) as the Director (Marketing), rejuvenating a stagnant consumer electronics business (Philips) as its Director Consumer Electronics, and creating a highly valued Indian fashion accessory brand (Titan) in the position of Vice President (Marketing).

Mr. Kant has chaired the Advertising Standards Council of India, National Readership Studies Council, the Indian Audit Bureau of Circulation and the Society of Indian Automobiles Manufacturers (SIAM), in the past and also been the Executive member of Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).

Mr. Kant currently serves on the boards of Helsinki based Kone Limited (one of the top elevator companies in the world), and Hawkins Cookers Ltd, a well-known consumer durable company in India. He is a member of the advisory boards at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Mumbai & IIT Kharagpur), Accenture India and is the Chairman advisory board of AkhandJyoti Hospital, one of the largest eye organisations in India. He is also a distinguished professor at IIT Kharagpur and a visiting leader at China Europe International Business School, Shanghai (CEIBS).

Mr. Kant takes active interest both in the education as well as the health areas. He was member of the governing board of Enactus (a non-profit US organisation), New York based WonderWork (supports surgeries for blindness, burns and club foot across the world) and Smile Train (an international cleft lip & palate charity organization). He was the Chairman of Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Rohtak, and Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Allahabad as well as a board member at National Institute of Design (NID) Ahmedabad, Centre of Extractive Industry at the Earth Institute University of Columbia, and the Centre for Governance, Institutions and Organisations (CGIO) at National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School. He was an Industrial Professor at the University of Warwick UK .

Mr. Kant studied at Mayo College, Ajmer, received his Bachelor of Technology (Honours) in Metallurgical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India and Master of Science ( Management Techniques in Industry), Aston University, in the UK. He has been conferred with a distinguished Alumnus Award by the first two and an honorary Doctor of Science (Honorary Causa) from Aston University, in the UK.  

Mr. Tomio Shichiri is a member of Cynosure Consultants, based out of Japan. 

Mr. Shichiri provides diverse strategic guidance to Cynosure on Japanese companies looking at entering India. His efforts have been instrumental in enhancing effectiveness to contribute to the firm’s core mission and values. 

Mr. Shichiri has served as the Country Director / Representative in India from 2018 at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO).

Mr. Shichiri was a co-organizer of the National Dialogue on Indian Agriculture Toward 2030, he collaborated with the Member Agriculture of NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MoAFW), as well as the Ministry of Jal Shakti and the Ministry of Fisheries and Animal Husbandry and Dairying. He has worked with major government institutions, including NITI Aayog, MoAFW, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change(MoEF), the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation (MoSPI), the Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR), the National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA), the Spice Board of India, the National Cooperative Development Cooperation (NCDC/NEDAC), the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. (NAFED) as well.

Mr. Shichiri served as a Project Manager from 2006 to 2011 in Afghanistan, in the Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Unit of FAO in Kabul. The programme included humanitarian response, agricultural alternative livelihood (licit crop substitution), and food security and nutrition in the context of post-conflict and stabilization. In 2009, he served as the acting GAIN Coordinator (Greening Afghanistan Initiative Programme), a Joint Programme of six UN agencies including UNAMA, UNDP, UNEP, UNOPS, WFP, and UNFAO. 

In 2011 Mr. Shichiri was appointed as the Administration Coordinator in the Crisis Management Centre - Animal Health (CMC-AH) at UNFAO’s headquarters at Rome, Italy. His work involved providing rapid deployment implementation, resource mobilization, and programme partnership coordination with such as OIE, USDA, DETRA, and other member states. 

In 2014 Mr. Shichiri served as UNFAO Country Director / Representative in Afghanistan. His core responsibility was to work for the humanitarian-development-peace triple nexus with focuses on community-based resilience building, climate change, water resources and transboundary animal / zoonotic diseases. 

Mr. Shichiri began his career in 1998 as a consultant to the World Bank, Rural Development Department, based at Washington DC, USA. He worked for the Land Quality Indicators (LQIs) program intended to help monitor whether human interventions in the landscape were leading toward or away from sustainability. 

Mr. Shichiri, project management experience ranges from work for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Between 2000 to 2005, he served as an expert at JICA and worked for the Sabah State Forest Development Authority (SAFODA) in Malaysia; the State Institute of Research, Science and Technology of the State of Amapa (IEPA) in Brazil; the Environment Department of the States of Rondônia (SEDAM) in Brazil, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Environment and Water Resources in Tunisia. 

Mr. Shichiri, a Japanese national, born in Osaka, holds a master’s degree in forestry from Yale University, USA. 

In 2017, Mr. Shichiri was honored with the prestigious “Binay Ranjan Sen Award” at the 40th Session of UNFAO Conference at Rome, Italy. 

Some articles published: “Global Agri-Food System Outlook from the Ukraine Crisis” (Sep-Oct 2022, Journal of World Affairs, KAIGAO JIJO, Tokyo, Japan), “Sustainable Agriculture as a Climate Action” (June 2024, Outlook India) and “Solution to Plastic Pollution” (June 2025, Outlook India).