Praveen is a leader of McKinsey’s retail-operations work for the Americas, with a focus on using advanced analytics to transform retail-store operations, supply chains, and procurement processes.

Formerly the head of our advanced-analytics efforts in operations, Praveen founded McKinsey’s store-solutions offering, a suite of advanced-analytics solutions focused on improving frontline sales and store productivity. His work on a cost and conversion program for a major US department store reduced its addressable labor by 15 percent while improving store conversion. His optimization effort for a top grocery retailer improved product availability while reducing back-room inventory by 75 percent.

Praveen guided a major US grocery store in revamping its operating model, implementing new store processes, improving labor scheduling, and modernizing back-end-ordering systems, which helped drive $350 million in operations efficiencies. He developed a major US retailer’s continuous-improvement capability that included a new diagnostic, a rapid pilot, training, and deployment infrastructure to allow ongoing lean improvement. Praveen also leveraged store technology for a major grocer, helping it to improve service and eliminate non-customer-facing labor.

Praveen sits on the board of Almost Home Kids, an affiliate of Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. He is also part of the executive council of Cara, a program that helps people living in poverty get and keep quality jobs through training and employment in market-competitive businesses.