Sajal is based in Chicago and leads McKinsey’s global work in the retail and consumer-goods industries.
In more than 25 years of management consulting, Sajal has counseled leading global retail and packaged-goods clients as they set growth strategies and face the challenges of both the changing international landscape and domestic-market shifts because of digitization, consolidation, and new entrants. He has served retail and consumer-goods clients across Asia, Canada, Europe, Latin America, and North America. He serves retail clients across multiple formats, including hypermarkets, pure ecommerce players, grocers, restaurant chains, department stores, and leading consumer-goods companies across food, consumer-electronics, personal-care, beauty, and other categories.
Sajal focuses on working with senior leaders and their management teams to drive growth and commercial and operations transformations across both retail and consumer-goods companies. Over the last few years he has been spending a lot of time with organizations on the potential and implications of tech enablement, including advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and their implications on the future of work.
Examples of Sajal’s recent projects include the following:
- devising and implementing an e-commerce-growth strategy for a global apparel wholesale brand
- serving a leading US department store on its marketing transformation
- helping a leading global consumer-goods company craft a growth strategy
- assisting in operations and supply-chain transformations for a high-growth grocery chain
- building industry-leading digital and analytics capabilities for a leading global restaurant chain
- developing a road map for automation and artificial-intelligence capabilities and evaluating its impact on the future workforce for a leading global retail company
- helping develop a growth strategy for an Asian accessories retailer
- designing and implementing a company-wide program of agile transformation for a Latin American retailer
Sajal has also led numerous private-equity due-diligence efforts, including conducting due diligences and improving business performance of portfolio companies. He also serves leading real-estate investment trusts. Regardless of the scope or size of a project, Sajal makes capability building a top priority, coaching executives on change management and ensuring that newly embedded solutions and approaches change ways of working and drive business performance.
Before joining McKinsey, Sajal was an executive for a retail and consumer-goods company in Asia and Europe. He has had the privilege of keynoting at leading industry forums, such as for APAS Show, Consumer Brands Association (formerly, Grocery Manufacturers Association), The Food Marketing Institute, Google Retail Advisory Council, and National Retail Federation, among others. As a well-published thought leader, he has contributed to the recent McKinsey Global Institute report on the future of work, growth, and renewal in the United States and is leading McKinsey’s proprietary perspectives on the reformation of retail.
On a personal level, Sajal has accomplished milestones such as climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, completing several Chicago Olympic distance triathlons, playing in the US Squash Illinois State Championships, and was a national swimmer and part of the Indian junior water-polo team.
As a global citizen who has lived and worked across continents, Sajal is also deeply invested in the power of foreign policy and is a trustee of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.