Rishi Kumar's avatarPerson

Rishi Kumar

Chief Transformation OfficerMatchingfit

Cary, NC

Skills

Executive Leadership
Innovation & Growth
Business Strategy

About

Dr. Rishi Kumar is a global executive, transformation strategist, and innovation leader with over 19 years of experience spearheading enterprise-wide digital, AI, and data-driven transformations for Fortune 500 organizations. He brings deep expertise in business strategy, product management, and building high-performing global teams to deliver innovation at scale. Before MatchingFit, Dr. Kumar served as Senior Vice President and Head of Transformation at Syntelli Solutions. Earlier, he held Vice President, Strategy & client partnerships role at Relanto. Dr. Kumar blends visionary leadership with execution excellence to drive outcomes across enterprise strategy, emerging technologies, digital product innovation, and agile transformation. He has successfully defined and executed Go-to-Market strategies and operating models that unify people, process, and technology to unlock value across business portfolios. Dr. Kumar is recognized for his ability to architect and scale AI-powered platforms, drive enterprise agility, and build customer-centric digital products. He is a trusted advisor to CXOs, known for turning bold ideas into business-impacting, scalable solutions—anchored in intelligent automation, cloud-first design, and human-centric experiences. Over his career, he has held senior leadership roles at top-tier firms including Relanto Inc., Centific Inc., CGI Inc., Virtusa, Cognizant, TCS, CSC, and Sopra Steria, where he led global transformation programs and innovation-led growth initiatives. He has made a lasting impact across industries, supporting leading Retail and Healthcare clients such as Walmart, TJX Companies, CVS Health, Boots, Cigna Insurance, Toyota, Kroger, Sears Holdings, and Florida Power & Light, helping them modernize systems, elevate customer experiences, and scale for the future. Rishi also advocates building a culture of learning, sharing, and innovation. After spending most of his career in the UK, India, and the US, he now resides with his family in Cary, North Carolina. He is an exceptionally involved people person, an inclusive leader, and a lifelong learner. He also practices spiritual practices and experiences with Vaastu Science, Vedic Science, and Numerology.

Published content

From Eyeballs to AI Agents: The New Economics of Marketing

expert panel

Marketing has always operated around a simple proposition: Get in front of people. Capture attention, create preference and make it easy for the consumer to buy.AI agents complicate every part of that formula.Instead of opening a search engine, comparing products, reading reviews and navigating checkout, a consumer may increasingly tell an agent what they want and let software handle the rest. The agent can interpret preferences, compare options, check prices, evaluate constraints and eventually complete the transaction.And if humans are no longer evaluating every option, companies may have to stop asking, “How do we get noticed?” and start asking, “How do we become the option an agent can confidently recommend?”Members of the Senior Executive AI Think Tank—a curated group of experts specializing in machine learning, generative AI and enterprise AI applications—see that transition from different vantage points. Here, they explore what this shift could mean for companies, consumers and the future of commerce—and what businesses may need to rethink as AI agents take on a greater role in the buying process.

When AI and Experience Clash: Letting Humans Challenge the Machine

expert panel

The machine says the patient is low risk. The veteran clinician says something feels wrong. The AI recommends cutting a workstream. The executive team knows that workstream is critical to a customer they are trying to win. The coding assistant produces perfectly functioning code—except it has quietly recreated a function that already exists somewhere else in the codebase.These aren't hypothetical scenarios. They are the kinds of moments leaders increasingly face as AI moves from experimentation into decisions that affect customers, employees, operations and the bottom line. Automatically trusting the machine ignores context, intuition and accountability. Automatically siding with the human can mean overlooking patterns and possibilities that AI can uncover. So what should happen when an AI system and an experienced human reach different conclusions?Members of the Senior Executive AI Think Tank—a curated community of leaders specializing in machine learning, generative AI and enterprise AI applications—have encountered this tension firsthand across healthcare, manufacturing, software development, enterprise transformation, market intelligence and technology strategy. In the examples that follow, they share what happened when AI and human expertise diverged, how their teams responded and what those moments revealed about the roles each should play in high-stakes decision-making.

Company details

Matchingfit

Industry

Information Technology & Services