Dr. Srivatsa Krishna, IAS
Secretary
Ministry of Tourism
Ministry of Tourism
Dr. Srivatsa Krishna topped India in the prestigious National Civil Services Examination (Rank 1 out of about 600,000 candidates in 1994) and was awarded the President's Gold Medal. He joined the
Indian Administrative Service (IAS), India's elite civil service. He is currently Secretary to Government
of India, Ministry of Tourism.
He was the first serving IAS officer to complete the Harvard Business School MBA Program and is an alumni of IIT Madras, Oxford University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi and Modern School. He was an invited Distinguished Senior Fellow and Visiting Professor, Stanford University.
He was the first serving IAS officer to complete the Harvard Business School MBA Program and is an alumni of IIT Madras, Oxford University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi and Modern School. He was an invited Distinguished Senior Fellow and Visiting Professor, Stanford University.
He has held senior leadership positions in the Governments of India, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and
Delhi in the IAS, across various sectors such as technology & innovation, e-governance, development
administration, urban infrastructure, health and commerce & industry. He was part of the core team
which set up the new municipality of “Cyberabad” (outside Hyderabad), which is today one of the
largest technology investment clusters in the world. He worked closely with McKinsey & Company to
establish Cyberabad and the 1st e-government program (and e-governance as a sector), in India.
Under his leadership as Secretary for Information Technology, Biotechnology, Science & Technology and E-Governance, Karnataka set up the Startup Warehouse (India’s Y-Combinator incubator for startups and the 10K startups program) in partnership with NASSCOM, the i4 incentives policy brought in the single largest FDI into India, and Karnataka won the Gold in the 1st World Government Summit inaugurated by President Barack Obama and Sheikh Mohammed. Prior to that he served in the Strategy, Finance and Risk Management Vice Presidency of The World Bank Group in Washington DC from 2003-2008 investing their proprietary private capital fund across asset classes and across multiple countries.
Dr. Krishna was awarded the World Economic Forum “Global Leader for Tomorrow” (YGL) Award and the prestigious Global Thinkers50 ("Oscars of Management Thought") Award, as one of the top 50 thinkers in 2013. Srivatsa has spoken on the Global TED Stage, Stanford Public Lecture, Harvard Centennial Summit, World Economic Forum@Davos, The Economist Annual Meetings, MIT, TIE, Berkeley South Asia Speaker Series, GMC etc. to name a few.
He was on the Steering Committee of the Porter Prize in India and invited to the McKinsey Global Infrastructure Board in his personal capacity. He is an invited member of the United Nations’ Secretary General’s Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence in 2024. He is on the Harvard Business School Global Advisory Board and is a Salzburg Fellowship Global Fellow.
He is an angel investor and mentor to many startups in India. He writes/appears for many top publications/media including Wall Street Journal, CNBC, CNN, Financial Times, The Hindu, Times of India, BBC and CNN. He is an accomplished singer and has sung playback for a motion picture “Shanghai” and secured an IMDB credit, whose protagonist is loosely based on his own life. He has also auditioned for Oscar Award winner A.R. Rahman for a forthcoming production.
Under his leadership as Secretary for Information Technology, Biotechnology, Science & Technology and E-Governance, Karnataka set up the Startup Warehouse (India’s Y-Combinator incubator for startups and the 10K startups program) in partnership with NASSCOM, the i4 incentives policy brought in the single largest FDI into India, and Karnataka won the Gold in the 1st World Government Summit inaugurated by President Barack Obama and Sheikh Mohammed. Prior to that he served in the Strategy, Finance and Risk Management Vice Presidency of The World Bank Group in Washington DC from 2003-2008 investing their proprietary private capital fund across asset classes and across multiple countries.
Dr. Krishna was awarded the World Economic Forum “Global Leader for Tomorrow” (YGL) Award and the prestigious Global Thinkers50 ("Oscars of Management Thought") Award, as one of the top 50 thinkers in 2013. Srivatsa has spoken on the Global TED Stage, Stanford Public Lecture, Harvard Centennial Summit, World Economic Forum@Davos, The Economist Annual Meetings, MIT, TIE, Berkeley South Asia Speaker Series, GMC etc. to name a few.
He was on the Steering Committee of the Porter Prize in India and invited to the McKinsey Global Infrastructure Board in his personal capacity. He is an invited member of the United Nations’ Secretary General’s Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence in 2024. He is on the Harvard Business School Global Advisory Board and is a Salzburg Fellowship Global Fellow.
He is an angel investor and mentor to many startups in India. He writes/appears for many top publications/media including Wall Street Journal, CNBC, CNN, Financial Times, The Hindu, Times of India, BBC and CNN. He is an accomplished singer and has sung playback for a motion picture “Shanghai” and secured an IMDB credit, whose protagonist is loosely based on his own life. He has also auditioned for Oscar Award winner A.R. Rahman for a forthcoming production.