McKinsey's Asia Chairman: Great Leaders Manage Contradictions

Founder-led companies have driven a disproportionate share of Asia's economic growth over the past two decades, according to McKinsey & Co. — and Gautam Kumra, chairman of McKinsey's Asia offices (ex-China), has spent 30 years advising the people behind them.

Kumra spoke to Tatler about Shapers and Founders: The Untold Stories of Asia's Extraordinary Owner-CEOs, published in September and co-authored with senior partner Joydeep Sengupta and partner Cheryl Lim. He discussed the book at the 2026 Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore.

The region's standout examples include Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries in India, Suphachai Chearavanont's CP Group in Thailand and Fang Hongbo's Midea Group in mainland China.

What are the six behaviours of Asia's owner-CEOs?

The co-authors identify six behaviours among top operators:

• Being "driven by mission"
• Having "a telescope in one eye, a microscope in the other"
• Being "bold but bounded"
• Innovating "with both a big and small 'i'"
• Deriving "extraordinary outcomes from talent"
• Scaling "without losing soul"

Kumra argues the book's value lies in the "how" — how Asian owner-CEOs bring ideas to practice repeatedly and at scale, in a region where ownership structures and time horizons differ from listed companies.

One example: Kaspi's Mikhail Lomtadze kept 80 per cent of his product development team together for almost 20 years by betting on the right founders' team rather than optimising for short-term talent flexibility. Japan's Itaru Tanimura at M3 launched one doctor use case at a time, spending only on the blade's edge rather than scaling prematurely. And Jio was possible only because of the capital Ambani had already built at Reliance in energy — "going all in where the balance sheet allowed it, and nowhere else."

Is it ego, or conviction with purpose?

Kumra rejects ego as the useful frame. "Rather than ego, the more useful frame, I think, is conviction with purpose," he said. The leaders' ambition was rarely about personal success alone — it was directed at building an institution, transforming a market, or contributing to their country.

When Ambani launched Jio, he hoped it would spur the digitisation of India. Suphachai Chearavanont stood his ground when regulatory obstacles threatened CP Group's 3G rollout in Thailand because he believed it would create value for the country. Ho Hung Anh built Techcombank with the ambition of intertwining it with Vietnam's development — in his words, when the country, its businesses and its people thrive, returns will follow.

Humility and continuous learning ran across the group. Anand Mahindra of Mahindra & Mahindra describes his leadership approach as one of perpetual curiosity, believing you can learn from almost anyone — a junior colleague, another industry, or a competitor.

What surprised the authors most?

"The biggest surprise was how well these owner-CEOs manage contradictions," Kumra said, citing F. Scott Fitzgerald's test of first-rate intelligence: holding two opposed ideas in mind and still functioning. "They think in decades but obsess over today's performance. They make enormous bets but are rigorous about the downside. They scale aggressively but fight to preserve their entrepreneurial soul."

Risk was the most vivid case. The authors expected "swashbuckling risk-takers" and found sophisticated risk managers — from UOB's acquisition and regional expansion during Covid-19 to Sun Pharma's investment in products before regulations and import logistics were assured. Sun Pharma's Dilip Shanghvi asks whether he can live with the worst case. Gulf Development's Sarath Ratanavadi in Thailand asks whether it can be managed. Their mastery of risk is precisely what gives them the confidence to be bold.

What can professional CEOs learn?

Amid today's "perma-crisis" of geopolitical uncertainty, reconfiguring trade and rapid AI, Kumra says professional CEOs can still adopt a founder's mindset despite fixed tenures, quarterly reporting and limited personal equity.

Piyush Gupta at Singapore's DBS embodied the telescope-and-microscope duality, aligning the board around long-term digital transformation while managing near-term trade-offs. Kazuo Hirai at Sony was "bold but bounded" — shedding legacy businesses, concentrating resources and setting the company on a path to record profitability.

How do advisors earn trust at this level?

"Trust is earned through consistency over time and by being useful rather than by being right," Kumra said. "Trust without challenge risks becoming affirmation; challenge without trust rarely gets heard. You need both."

The founders model this internally. Unicharm's Takahisa Takahara values primary information — "enriching your own drawer" — by spending time with customers and in stores. Uday Kotak of Kotak Mahindra Bank warns that "the lessons of history can become the baggage of history." Narayana Murthy put quantitative analysis at the heart of decision-making at Infosys, challenging judgment with data. The broader lesson, Kumra says: don't become captive to your own intuition.