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Kiran Balasubramanian joins Lenovo as head of communications India
Former DigitalOcean and AWS communications leader takes charge as Lenovo pushes Hybrid AI
MUMBAI: Lenovo is adding a new voice to its communications playbook. Kiran Balasubramanian has joined Lenovo as head of communications for India, taking charge at a time when the technology company is placing greater emphasis on its Hybrid AI strategy.
Balasubramanian announced the move on LinkedIn, saying his new remit covers external and internal communications as well as analyst relations. He will work with Lenovo’s leadership team to communicate its Hybrid AI strategy across personal and enterprise AI.
The appointment comes with Balasubramanian bringing more than a decade of experience across technology communications, public relations and corporate communications. Before joining Lenovo, he was director of communications at DigitalOcean, where he worked on communications for the global cloud platform.
He previously spent about six years with Amazon Web Services, holding several communications and public relations roles. These included principal, public relations and PR manager lead for public sector enterprise and government for AWS India and South Asia.
Earlier, Balasubramanian held marketing and communications roles at Accenture. His career has also included stints in the public relations industry, giving him experience across corporate reputation, technology and stakeholder communications.
At Lenovo, Balasubramanian’s immediate focus will be helping articulate the company’s Hybrid AI ambitions, which span both personal devices and enterprise technology.
In his announcement, he highlighted Lenovo’s investment in technology innovation, including more than 20 R&D labs, as well as its manufacturing footprint of more than 30 sites. He also pointed to India’s growing importance to the company beyond revenue, particularly in R&D, manufacturing, supply chains and customer and partner engagement.
For Lenovo, the communications brief arrives as AI increasingly becomes central to the technology industry’s product and business narratives. The company’s portfolio stretches from ThinkPad and IdeaPad laptops to Yoga, Legion and Motorola, giving its India communications operation a broad consumer and enterprise canvas.
Balasubramanian said he was particularly drawn to Lenovo because of its technology innovation, manufacturing scale and operational growth, as well as his familiarity with brands such as ThinkPad, IdeaPad, Yoga, Legion and Motorola.
The move also marks a quick transition for the communications executive. His LinkedIn profile shows he joined DigitalOcean in July 2025 as director of communications before moving to Lenovo in August 2026.
His experience at AWS and DigitalOcean gives Balasubramanian a background in communicating cloud and emerging technology businesses, while his new role places him closer to a much wider mix of consumer devices, enterprise solutions and AI-enabled products.
Lenovo’s growing focus on Hybrid AI also means communications will need to connect two increasingly overlapping worlds: AI running on personal devices and AI powering enterprise infrastructure and applications.
Balasubramanian also referenced Lenovo’s recent involvement with the FIFA World Cup 2026, where the company served as an official technology partner. He highlighted the deployment of AI-powered technology solutions at scale and the company’s reported 99.99 per cent uptime across its solutions during the tournament.
With India becoming an increasingly important base for technology development, manufacturing and supply-chain operations, Balasubramanian’s appointment puts an experienced technology communications professional at the centre of Lenovo’s India narrative. The challenge now is to turn a complex AI story into one that customers, partners, employees and analysts can easily understand.
