Amitabh Kant is the Chief Executive Officer for The National Institute for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog. We caught up with him during his recent visit to Silicon Valley and spoke to him about being an entrepreneurial bureaucrat and his branding campaigns for India for tourism and the Make in India and Startup India.

Kant joined the Indian civil service in 1980. He says he broke a lot of rules as a bureaucrat to make things happens. God’s Own Country, a successful marketing campaign for the Southern state of Kerala. This was an initiative that he launched when he was Secretary, Tourism for Kerala. The marketing campaign propelled Kerala as one of the top tourist destinations in India. He was then involved in Incredible India! a marketing campaign to help promote India as a tourist destination.

Kant is the author Branding India: An Incredible Story.