Ramesh Jude Thomas, “RJT” to his friends and colleagues, is the founder of EQUiTOR Value Advisory Pvt. Ltd., the erstwhile Indian Partner for Interbrand.

He is credited with introducing Brand Valuation as a strategic business tool to the Indian industry. He led India’s first known strategic Brand Valuation for Titan Industries Ltd., immediately followed by 17 companies in the TATA group. Under his stewardship, EQUITOR has actively collaborated with Indian managements to deliver a little over USD6 Bn of additional enterprise value over the last decade.

RJT is often called upon to speak to business audiences, company managements and more recently sovereign governments, on the subject of valuing and managing their brands as strategic business assets. He has done so in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and the Middle East.

An invited faculty to INSEAD in Paris, he has also lectured at leading institutions in India including 4 of the IIMs, the ISB, SP Jain, MICA, NMIMS, ASCI and a host of others. He’s been a convener of earlier CII international brand summits—along with several other CII CEO and CMO summits.

He is a prolific writer & a TEDx speaker, having contributed a viewpoint to almost every major newspaper and business magazine on the theme of ‘Brands as Strategic Business Assets’. Amongst these, he had developed and run a column called ‘Cutting Edge’ for The Economic Times and contributed to the ‘View point’ column in Mint where he is also a Guest Columnist on the theme ‘Brands in the Boardroom’. Under his stewardship, EQUiTOR has been the curator for two national brand awards, viz., AIMA-RK Swamy High Performance Brand Award and Mint Marketing Awards.

He has sat on the board of several companies and not-for-profits in India and abroad. More recently he was appointed as the Senior Advisor to KPMG. His more fervent endeavour is his work with Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital. As a committed Advisory Board Member, he plays an integral role in propelling the NGO’s mission to eliminate curable blindness in Bihar.

He is an avid half-marathon runner with four sub-two-hour finishes in the last 6 months. On occasions, RJT accompanies himself on stage with an acoustic guitar, most recently for the Genesis Foundation’s fundraiser “CEOs Can Sing” to support critical care for young children.