[1] Jaikumar graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, where he earned a bachelor's degree.
[5] Jaikumar began his career at the Harvard Business School in 1980, where he taught MBA students.
[2] Jaikumar worked with his thesis advisor Fisher on a consulting project between the University of Pennsylvania and Air Products & Chemicals, which won the 1983 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences.
[1] Additionally, he won the Frederick Winslow Taylor Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Grosvenor Plowman Prize from the National Council for Physical Distribution Management.
[1][3] He was an advisor to the Office of Technology Assessment and the United States Senate Committee on Commerce and Science.
"[2] As an adult, Jaikumar built a school and paid for the teaching staff of a Himalayan village where he had been rescued from a fall by an Indian shepherdess during a climbing expedition when he was a college student.