Winner. Business Leader of the Year 2023

Asit Kumar Sahoo

Position: Senior Commercial Product Manager - Heading the BCO Product Line
Company: Flexport Inc.
City: Sunnyvale, California
Country: USA
Economic/Business Sector: Technology/Software & IT Services

Asit Sahoo has over ten years of experience working across Product, Strategy, and Entrepreneurship. He has worked as an Investment Banker, Strategy Consultant, and he is currently a Product Leader working with multinational firms across APAC, Europe, and the US.

He holds an MBA from the prestigious Ivy League Columbia Business School, US, and a Master's equivalent in Industrial Management from NITIE, India. He is also a trained Computer Science Engineer, having done a Bachelor of Technology in India.

Asit has advised publicly listed company CEOs, industry association leaders, and other C-level executives to turn around businesses and consulted startups on creating new products and business lines in India. He not only co-founded an e-commerce company but also scaled the business 4x year on year in 3 years while setting up strategic partnerships with firms across India and China. He has led multimillion-dollar M&A integrations and launched new innovative products, and led the growth strategy for a $100+ million business catering to 3500+ businesses in the US.

Asit specializes in 0 to 1 products taking them from concept to launch (drawing from his Startup experience, which he had co-founded in India), and is an expert on Growth Scaling (drawing from experience at Equifax, EY & Nomura). He currently works for Flexport (TIME's Most Influential Companies of 2022 and a CNBC Disruptor Company), leading the Beneficial Cargo Owners' new business line. Before this, he led the Product Growth and New Product Innovations for Equifax's US Commercial businesses, an entirely new product line to make Global Trade easy, starting with the Fortune 500 companies in the US.

Asit is a member of several organizations:
• MLE℠ – Leaders Excellence awarded by Leaders Excellence at Harvard Square;
• International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences;
• AICRA - All India Council for Robotics & Automation.

When not working, Asit pursues his passion for the Climate Change Mission, where he works as a key member of ThinkOfNature.org, a Silicon Valley-based Climate non-profit. He is always looking out for moonshot ideas and pragmatic actionable to not feel inspired but also to make an outsized impact on society.

As a seasoned global product executive with over a decade of expertise in data, technology, and the supply chain industry, Asit Kumar Sahoo has a proven track record of driving innovation in the global supply chain. He has extensive experience leading analytics-driven products across the U.S. and APAC regions and has advised multiple C-level executives.

Some of his accomplishments:

International Jury:
• Edison Awards;
• Stevie Awards - Judge at Middle East North Africa Stevie Awards, Sales & Customer Service;
• Globee Award - Judge at the CEO World Awards, Women World Awards, and Business Excellence Awards;
• Webby Awards;
• Codie Awards;
• Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards.

Columnist at International Press:
• The Guardian.

Patent Filed:
• Patent 1 - 360 degree real-time risk assessment of business for reliable operations;
• Patent 2 - CSRA Score – Multidimensional risk assessment including alternative risks for onboarding, portfolio monitoring, and collection purpose.