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Ketan Kumar

PartnerLondon

Advises and serves life science and private capital clients on R&D and operations transformation, including clinical operations, and on portfolio, product launch, and investment strategies

Ketan is the global leader of McKinsey’s R&D cost and chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) work. He is passionate about accelerating R&D and industry productivity in life sciences in light of rising costs and regulatory requirements. He serves clients across the life sciences value chain, from leading biopharma companies to private capital investors.

Examples of Ketan’s recent work include the following:

  • driving an R&D cost transformation at a large global pharma company, with the ambition to boost efficiency across the full R&D budget
  • conducting an R&D transformation for a large biopharma focused on clinical operations, central labs, and contract research organizations (CROs) to generate millions in savings
  • leading an end-to-end clinical operations transformation for a global pharma company, moving from a legacy mix of different sourcing models to one harmonized clinical delivery model
  • developing a network strategy for a CGT CDMO with a large development portfolio and proactive M&A roadmap
  • accelerating the launch of the rare disease portfolio for a large biopharma company to reduce value leakage by 50 percent between sourcing, CMC, and clinical gates, including securing the right process guardrails and governance across the development life cycle
  • developing a biosimilar and combination products growth strategy for a leading biopharma player to build a partnership pipeline for launches to boost the R&D pipeline by 30 percent over five years
  • leading 20+ commercial, operations, and vendor due diligence projects across life science and life science services in the last three years

Prior to joining McKinsey, Ketan worked for more than six years across various roles in industry and private equity at Unilever and Ardian. He is a chemical engineer by training and has an MBA in strategy and operations.

Published Work

Building a shared vision for pharma R&D–supplier partnerships,” McKinsey & Company, January 2025

Pharma operations: The path to recovery and the next normal,” McKinsey & Company, May 2020

Past Experience

Unilever
Global supply-chain manager

Ardian
Portfolio associate

EDUCATION

INSEAD
MBA

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
BTech, chemical engineering