Nikhil Kandanuru

Enterprise Transformation & Delivery Leader with 17+ years of experience in global service delivery, operational excellence, digital transformation and AI-enabled business optimization. Proven expertise in driving Generative AI adoption, leading high-risk client portfolios, managing 250+ FTE teams and delivering large-scale transformation programs across APAC, the Middle East and North America. Recognized for translating business strategy into measurable operational outcomes, client success and sustainable growth.

Strategic Partnerships Manager (Global Sales/BD + Chennai Ops Centre Head) at Advertflair (2024-02 – 2025-12)

Led enterprise-wide Generative AI transformation initiatives across creative operations, workflow automation and customer processes, aligning business priorities to AI use cases and adoption plans.

• Ran discovery workshops with senior stakeholders and converted business requirements into AI transformation roadmaps covering LLMs, RAG, AI assistants, prompt engineering and intelligent automation.
• Owned end-to-end transformation delivery including scope, timelines, resourcing, governance, risk mitigation, KPI reporting and executive communication.
• Directed cross-functional execution across business, sales, delivery, technology, marketing and operations to deliver measurable business outcomes with predictable delivery cadence.
• Improved operational performance by increasing on-time delivery to 95% and reducing rework by 50% through process simplification and delivery standardization.
• Increased enterprise growth through AI, AR/VR and digital transformation solutions, achieving an 85% proposal win rate through disciplined pipeline governance and executive deal reviews.
• Designed customer engagement and service improvement initiatives that reduced product return rates by 70% and improved stakeholder confidence.
• Dillard's, USA – GenAI Transformation Lead: Assessed product photography operations, vendor economics and production planning; defined an AI-driven cost intelligence approach to improve visibility, cost optimization and executive decision-making.
• Crozier, USA – AI Solution Lead: Designed a creative operations AI assistant and RAG-based knowledge approach to improve brief generation, support workflows and knowledge retrieval across distributed teams.

Tender Partner at Maersk Global Service Centre India Private Limited (2019-11 – 2024-01)

Managed global tender operations, pricing governance and customer requirements for North American, GCC and African markets.

• Led process simplification across the tender lifecycle covering requirement analysis, document review, response coordination and workflow governance.
• Identified automation opportunities that reduced manual effort and improved process standardization across tender operations.
• Partnered with technology teams on document intelligence and knowledge retrieval initiatives tied to AI-enabled process simplification.
• Analyzed tender lifecycle challenges including document review, requirement extraction and response preparation.
• Defined automation opportunities using AI-assisted document analysis and knowledge retrieval concepts.
• Supported solution approach for extracting key tender requirements, summarizing documents and improving response quality.
• Improved turnaround time and consistency through workflow simplification and automation.

Officer at Citibank (2014-01 – 2019-11)

Managed operational and service delivery responsibilities in a high-control banking environment. Drove service and escalation improvements that later supported a major retention turnaround highlighted in executive achievements.

Administrative Manager at PNB REALTY LIMITED (2012-04 – 2013-12)

Senior Customer Service Representative at RR Donnelley (2010-08 – 2012-03)

Network Engineer at PNB TECHWAVES PRIVATE LIMITED (2008-08 – 2010-07)

Bachelors in Engineering, Computer Science – Dr MGR Educational and Research Centre (2003 – 2007)