Arvind J. Singh, Class of 2012
Co-founder, President & CEO, Utopia, Inc.
Mr. Singh is a serial entrepreneur with experience in building global businesses for the last 20 years. He believes in boot strapping start-ups and has done that successfully twice with no external funding.
Prior to co-founding Utopia in 2003, Mr. Singh was the CEO of Value Communications Corporation (ValuCom), a company he founded in 1996. Under his leadership, ValuCom grew to be one of the most recognized brand names in prepaid telecom in the U.S. The company was acquired by Rediff.com (NASDAQ: REDF) in 2001.
Mr. Singh began his corporate career in sales & marketing with IDM (an IBM spin-off) in India. He moved to Dubai with Hewlett Packard (Emitac) in 1988 where he managed and developed some of HP’s largest customers in the Middle East. After earning his MBA, he worked at Kraft Foods in the U.S. in various marketing and senior management positions. During his tenure at Kraft, he launched multiple new brands, some winning the highest award for superior achievement from Philip Morris (Kraft’s parent company at the time). His responsibilities included strategic planning; setting P&L targets; and advertising and business development for several Kraft brands, including a flagship brand with revenues exceeding $1 billion and marketing expenses exceeding $200 million.
Mr. Singh has served on the Board of Directors of Lake Forest Graduate School of Management since 2006, and sits on the advisory boards of several companies. He had the honor to meet one-on-one with the President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, in 2003 to brainstorm ideas on ways to promote entrepreneurship in India. He was also the keynote speaker at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Annual Naturalization & Citizenship Ceremony held at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago in 2005. He is fluent in Hindi and Punjabi and speaks some Arabic.
MS, Birla Institute of Technology and Science (Pilani, India)
MBA, The Anderson School of Management at UCLA
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