Let’s join forces at the SHRM India Annual Conference 2022 to ‘Cause the Effect’ that WE want to see at the workplace.
Each one of us can create a ripple, together these ripples can become waves and collectively become a Tsunami of change!
Enhance your skills, evolve with industry changes and get the insights and best practices you need to continuously make a positive impact on the workplace.
For the past 11 years we have been shaping the curve at SHRM IAC.
Join us to Be the Change
Remain up to date on the current workplace issues, compliance requirements and the latest HR technologies
Establish connections industry professionals and business leaders
Gain the access to 80+ solution providers showcasing a wide range of innovative HR products & services
Get Up close with Global Thought Leaders & Experts
Brave the new world with confidence and tools
Take away your learnings in the form of case studies, reports, papers, and articles
Chief Executive Officer
SHRM India, APAC & MENA
Achal Khanna is the CEO for SHRM India, APAC & MENA. SHRM India is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), which is the world’s largest association devoted to human resource management with more than 3,00,000 HR and business executive members in 165 countries.
Achal is responsible for leading the India operations of SHRM, as well as Asia Pacific operations including Middle-East. She serves on the global SHRM Leadership Team and is responsible for building the brand, expanding its business and developing professional relationships with government agencies, and other HR and business associations in the region.
Achal has over 30 years of work experience. Prior to joining SHRM, she was Managing Director for Kelly India operations; Vice President for GE; and Country Manager for Polaroid India. She has also worked with Dupont, ITC and Cosmo Group in various capacities.
She is a recipient of the “Best Women Executive in India” award.
Achal holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics; a Master’s Degree in English Literature and she is an MBA from Delhi.
Business Consultant, Author, CEO Advisor
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In his work with companies including Toyota, Bank of America, Key Bank, ICICI Bank, Aditya Birla Group, Novartis, Max Group, Yildiz Holdings, UST Global, Fast Retailing (Uniqlo), Humana and Matrix, he is known for cutting through the complexity of running a business in today’s fast changing environment to uncover the core business problem.
His real-world solutions, shared with millions through his books and articles in top business publications, have been praised for being practical, relevant and highly actionable - the kind of advice you can use Monday morning. Jack Welch, former Chairman of GE said, “He has the rare ability to distill meaningful from meaningless and transfer it to others in a quiet, effective way.”
Professor Charan has coached more than a dozen leaders who went on to become CEOs. He reaches many more up and coming business leaders through in-house executive education programs. His energetic, interactive teaching style has won him several awards, including the Bell Ringer award at GE’s famous Crotonville Institute and best teacher award at Northwestern.
He was among Business Week‘s top ten resources for in-house executive development programs. Ram has authored or coauthored more than 30 books that have sold over 4 million copies in more than a dozen languages. Four of his books were Wall Street Journal bestsellers, including Execution (coauthored with former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy), which spent more than 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He also has written for publications including over 12 articles for Harvard Business Review, 12 articles for Fortune and numerous articles for BusinessWeek, Time, Chief Executive and USA TODAY.
Ram was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources and was named one of the most influential people in corporate governance and the board room by Directorship magazine. He has served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Corporate Governance and serves or has served on a dozen boards in the US, Brazil, China, India, Canada, and Dubai.
Cricketer, former Captain of Indian Cricket Team, Arjuna Awardee
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Ajinkya Rahane is one of India’s most formidable middle-order batsmen who has represented India with great distinction at the international levels. Ajinkya came into the national cricket team reckoning after scoring consistently for Mumbai team. In just his second Ranji season, he scored 1,000+ runs that helped Mumbai team to its 38th Ranji Trophy win. Only 11 players have scored 1,000+ runs in a single Ranji trophy season.
Ajinkya first broke into the Indian team by making his debut in a T20 match against England in August 2011. The very next month, he made his ODI debut, against the same opposition with an impressive opening stand. Two years later, in 2013 Ajinkya made his Test debut against Australia, and there was no looking back since.
Ajinkya has this enviable record of having scored 9 of his 12 Test hundreds on foreign soil, that too in the more challenging playing conditions in England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.
Ajinkya has captained the Indian team and has a record of never having lost a match as a captain. Under his leadership, India won the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia where the team staged a remarkable comeback after losing the opening Test to defeat a very strong Australian side
In the Indian Premier League (IPL) too Ajinkya has been a top performer, having represented Mumbai Indians, Rajasthan Royals, Rising Pune Supergiant, Delhi Capitals in the past. Currently he represents Kolkata Knight Riders.
In 2016, Ajinkya received the Arjuna Award for his stellar contributing to the sport of cricket in India.
Outside the cricket field he supports young start-ups and has partnered some interesting companies in the last few years.
Actor, Author, Anchor, Fitness Enthusiast
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In a career spanning over two decades, Mandira Bedi has made her mark as an actor, anchor, sports presenter, fitness enthusiast as well as author.
She became a household name when she began hosting ICC Cricket World Cups in 2003, Champions Trophies in 2004 and Indian Premier League for Sony Max.
Since then, she has continued to engage with audiences in person and virtually successfully in different roles from an anchor, mc, facilitator, speaker to fireside chats in the space of health, well-being and happiness.
She loves taking on new challenges. Her sense of adventure had her drive a 12-ton goods carrier truck, across the Himalayas over 6 of the highest motorable passes in the world.
Despite her busy schedule managing her family and various projects, Mandira has also found the time to be a role model of fitness amongst thousands of women.
Recently she added another feather to her cap as author with her first book Happy for no Reason
Mandira’s mantra is to remain strong and fit, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally too!
Global motivational Speaker, Paralympic Medal Winner, Author
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Hitesh is a Paralympic Medal winner with the Singapore Cerebral Palsy Football Team and the author of the book “Better Than Normal” which has sold more than 11,000 copies worldwide. He has received the South-East Asia Excellence Awards-Special Mention of Outstanding Achievements for being an exceptional role model to youth all around the world.
Hitesh is also a certified Jack Canfield Success Principles Trainer and is featured regularly on local and global TV, Radio and Magazines for his crazy mission to inspire 50 Million People by 2050!
Hitesh was born with Cerebral Palsy. But despite his condition, till date he has touched and won the hearts of more than 1.2 Million people from over 32 Nationalities. He is consistently voted as the best inspirational speaker in every event he speaks at, and has delivered keynotes at Microsoft, TATA Steel, Prudential, Great Eastern, Buhler and Deutsche Bank.
Speaker, Author, Partner & Learning Content Head
Prosearch Consultants & Bizpunditz
A post graduate in Statistics (IIT, Bombay) and also in Management (IIM, Ahmedabad), Anita has reinvented herself almost every decade. Her early years were spent in advertising, market research and marketing consultancy. For the next two decades, she along with her sports broadcaster husband Harsha ran a highly successful motivational series called The Winning Way-Learnings from sport for managers. The series translated into a book by the same name, which sold over 1,25,000 copies and started a new genre in motivational speaking. Anita went on to set up Bizpunditz, India’s first video learning library for managers which was eventually sold to an edtech company. A mother of two sons, Anita is a yoga and Sudoku enthusiast and an amateur keyboard player.
Country Head - Softbank India
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I’m a professional entrepreneur who truly loves the challenge of shaping the industry transformations of mobile internet, satellite television, renewable energy, digital unicorns, electric vehicles etc.
Always with a star team and a positive energy to create world leading businesses with a profound societal impact. Excellence with integrity is my motto!
I am the Country Head - SoftBank India supporting SoftBank Group and Vision Fund as one of the largest investors of $15bn in over 25 AI focused portfolio companies in India. I support the entrepreneurs and CEOs to address the regulatory and government issues.The key portfolio companies are OLA, OYO, Emeritus, Lenskart, Grofers, Snapdeal, WeWork, Delhivery, InMobi, Firstcry, Uber, Swiggy, Unacademy etc.
I coach them for effective execution of the profitable growth strategy and embed a viable business model to enable the businesses to 10x-20x scale-up to their full potential in India and expand to many international markets. I support them in building a robust leadership team, e2e digitization plan, an admired brand, and a robust corporate governance.
Earlier I was the Executive Chairman of SB Energy from 2015 and achieved over 5GW of renewable energy - solar, wind and hybrid - capacity in India.
Previously I was Managing Director and CEO, Bharti Airtel, for operations in 20 countries in Asia and Africa till 2015. I led the creation of the unique business model, an admired brand, high performance culture and the operations to scale from 2m to 400m customers to be the third largest telco in the world. I led formation of Airtel TV leader in DTH service and Indus the largest tower company in the world for achieving major infrastructural synergies.
I started my career in HR in 1979 with the DCM Shriram and held business leadership positions in the Foods, Chemicals, Refrigeration and Honda JV etc. After 16 years in the manufacturing sector, I led a mobile startup Escotel to achieve market leadership in 3 important markets in India. I was the Board Member of GSMA in 2008 and 2012 and the Chairman, CII Task Force on Ease of Doing Business and now Chair of CII Unicorn Forum for attracting new tech investments in India.
Overall, my 43 years of work experience is divided between the manufacturing, telecom, renewable energy, and now digital sectors. I have worked in US, Europe, China, Japan and build businesses in 25 countries in Asia Pacific and Africa.
Airtel got the “Company of the year” Award by The Economic Times in 2007 and “Airtel” became no 1 brand across all categories in India. I was adjudged “Telecom Man of the Year” in 2000, “Distinguished Alumni” by SRCC Delhi University and “Lifetime Achievement Award” in 2020.
I hold degrees in Commerce, Law and MBA from Delhi University. I attended "Executive Management Program” at Michigan and “Advanced Management Program” at Wharton.
Comedian & Host
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Anu Menon did a masters in drama in London and moved to Bombay to pursue her first love- the stage. For 8 years she was better know As her alter-ego Vj Lola Kutty on channel V. Her stage credits include Lillete Dubey's Sammy, Raell Padamsee's Noises Off, Divya Palat's A personal War (that won at the Edinburgh Theatre festival) Rage's One on One - part 1&2 and Qtp's God of Carnage. Anu does stand up as well now and opened for Brad Sherwood and Colin Mochrie of Whose Line is it anyway fame during their India tour. Her stand up special "Wonder Menon" is the first female special to feature on Amazon Prime. Her dream is to do a shampoo commercial or item number.
Secretary at Capacity Building Commission, Government of India
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Shri Hemang Jani is an experienced professional in public policy, governance and innovation systems. For the past 18 years, he has worked towards improving public service delivery through technology, designing national innovation frameworks, applying technology and innovation in governance, and enabling private sector development at state, federal and international levels.
Before joining as the Secretary of the Capacity Building Commission, he worked as a Senior Private Sector Specialist at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington DC, USA. He has also worked with the Government of India, as an Officer on Special Duty (Knowledge and Innovation) in the Prime Minister’s office. During this time, he conceived and created Atal Innovation Mission.
Before moving to the development sector, he spent a few years with leading consulting firms. He regularly engages in poetry, photography, reading and traveling to stay self-motivated!
Sports Marketing Consultant & Cricket Enthusiast
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Akhil’s expertise spans across the spectrum of sports marketing, category management, sponsorship consulting & digital content creation.
He started his career with sports marketing divisions of leading communication agencies like Ogilvy and DDB and moved onto consulting with IMG’s sports consulting division. His last corporate stint was with Puma India, as the head of their cricket business.
Since March 2014, he runs his own boutique agency where he pursues his true calling of working on projects which he enjoys and is working in various domains in the sports industry.
He has been the founding member of a Pro Kabaddi franchisee and has developed various content IP's like What The Duck,Viru Ke Funde, Bowled Over and WTD Googlies. He partners Indian cricketer Ajinkya Rahane in all his commercial ventures and is helping develop a few startups as an advisor
Indian Mountaineer
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Poorna Malavath is an Indian mountaineer. On 25th May 2014, Poorna climbed the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest at the age of 13 years and 11 months and became the youngest Indian female in the world to have reached the world’s highest Mountain.
Her mountaineering journey did not stop after Mount Everest; she went on an expedition to climb seven tallest mountains in each of the seven continents, The 7-Summits.
She successfully climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa in the year 2016, and Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Russia and Europe, on 27 July 2017. It was a proud moment for her when she unfurled a 50ft long Indian tricolor and sang Indian National Anthem at the top of Mt. Elbrus. Her feat of climbing continued with Mount Aconcagua (South America, 2019), Mount Carstens pyramid (Oceanian region, 2019), Mount Vinson Massif (Antarctica, 2019), and other few Indian mountains. She Successfully completed Mt. Denali (Alaska, North America) on 5th June 2022 and completed “The 7-Summits.”
Poorna was born on 10th June 2000 in a tiny village, Pakala in the state of Telangana, India. Coming from poor family background, both her parents are agricultural laborers. She graduated from Telangana social welfare residential school (TSWREIS) and went to Minnesota state university, USA as an exchange student. She studied Political sciences to understand and fight for woman empowerment.
A film based on Poorna’s life story was released in 2017 named “Poorna” (Courage has no limits). A book, “Poorna the youngest girl in the world to scale Mount Everest,” is also published on Poorna’s life journey. The book captures Poorna’s journey from her hometown Pakala, a village in Nizamabad district of Telangana, to climbing Mt. Everest. The book is an inspiration for people to achieve their dreams despite life challenges. Poorna was listed on the “Forbes Indian List” of “Self-made Women” in 2020.
She has received many awards and appreciations from the government and different organizations across the world. Some of the notable awards she received are the Ruby Jubilee Healthcare award from the then President of INDIA Sri APJ Abdul Kalam, The excellence award by the president of India shri Pranab Mukherji, the Amazing Indians Awards 2016 from the Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi, and the JFW Awards 2018.
She is an inspiration to young women across the world. Poorna’s achievement has stopped child marriages in her community and parents have realized the potential of sending the Girls to school. The schools have increased the number of girls students after her achievement from rural / tribal regions.
President - Global HR, Lupin
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Yashwant Mahadik (Yash) a seasoned global HR professional with over 30 years of experience in top-notch multinational corporations. Has established a track record of success in all his roles and assignments. His experience is diverse and varies across industries/sectors (Technology, Consumer and Healthcare) and geographies (India, UK, Japan, USA, ASEAN and Europe).
His strengths and areas of expertise include; Strategy (Business, Workforce and HR functional), HR and Business Transformation, Leadership Development, Organization and Culture building, Capability Building, Workforce Design & Planning, Talent Management and Succession Planning, Merger/Acquisition Integration and Executive Coaching. He has led/is leading global transformation programs and initiatives in J&J, Philips, SunPharma and Lupin at enterprise level. He is proficient and enthusiastic about evolving social and digital technologies and has a strong presence on social media platforms such as Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, etc and has a blog of his own (www.yashmahadik.com). He is recognized amongst top 50 most powerful HR professionals coming from India and is a leading HR thought leader who has worked in association with leading academicians in USA for conceptualizing and executing global strategic initiatives in areas of Human Resource Management.
Has a very high social (development sector) orientation - believes in sharing his earnings and time with social developmental causes related to education for the underprivileged. Is an avid golfer and enjoys travelling and reading. He is a very keen photographer and is a creator of many professional level, highly creative images using digital photography equipment and technologies. He is incubating his new and personal venture "Yash Mahadik Photography" in dedication of a noble wildlife conservation cause.
Journalist & Entrepreneur
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Faye D’Souza is an award winning journalist, who has changed the way news is covered on Indian Television by focusing the audience’s attention on the issues that matter to the citizens rather than those that fuel the emotions of partisan debates. Faye’s calm, researched style of hosting news shows prioritizes information over opinion.
Her focus on accountability of government, responsible taxation, safety of women and children, education, health and urban development has also resulted in several policy changes that have proven that a journalist can still bring about improvements in the status quo.
Faye is the journalist of the millennials – young, fresh and brutally honest.
Faye was the youngest woman journalist in India to have led a national news channel as its Executive Editor. Post her exit from television, Faye has begun her entrepreneurial journey and will soon launch her own digital news platform -targeted at the young, urban Indian audience
Former Chairman, GSK Consumer Healthcare
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Mr. Dwarakanath brings a rich and varied experience of five decades in the arena of Leadership development ,Human Capital. Legal and Corporate Governance. Till recently , he was the Chairman of GSK Consumer Healthcare and associated with GDK over four decades. He has held Board/Advisory positions in various organisations. He was also associated with Max and Shriram Groups.
His passion for building a progressive and people-centric culture is apparent from the fact that GSK had been adjudged as one of India’s “Best Employers” for several years. His initiative to drive the new corporate culture during times of integration, through ‘Simply Better Way’, was a benchmark for then SmithKline Beecham.
He has held several management positions in the various professional bodies. To name a few, he was the President of National Human Resources Development Network (NHRDN), President of Delhi Management Association (DMA), Regional President – Northern Region of All India Management Association (AIMA) and Treasurer of AIMA. He has received several prestigious awards for his valuable contribution to the business and also in the field of Human Resources and Leadership Development.
Founder & CEO, XED
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John Kallelil, Founder and CEO, XED understands that we live in a complex world, full of paradoxes and contradictions. In a world marred by information overload and digital overkill, clarity becomes power. It is with this intent that he founded XED in 2015 to enable individuals and organizations to lead with clarity, order, and purpose. Armed with this vision and two decades’ worth of expertise in the Banking and EdTech industries, he launched XED to empower leaders who aspire to drive change and create a positive impact.
XED is a leading provider of executive education in the Middle East, Far East, LATAM and South Asia. Catering to the niche segment of senior leaders, XED offers open and custom programs for individuals and organizations. XED partners with top-class Ivy League universities to offer high-impact programs in strategy, leadership, entrepreneurship, innovation, digital, and finance, delivered by world-renowned faculty. Leveraging technology and immersive learning formats, XED has empowered more than 15,000 senior leaders from diverse organizations, Fortune 500 companies, and global brands.
In just a couple of years, John fulfilled his vision of becoming the region’s largest provider of executive education for organizations and senior leaders. John has an MBA from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
A firm advocate of decentralizing and democratizing education, John realized the worth and value of filling the executive skills gap with continuous learning programs that go beyond conventional educational approaches. John drives XED with a passion to empower senior leaders across the board with high-impact learning initiatives.
When he is not working, John enjoys loves spending time with his family and interacting with his peers and network of academic experts. John is also an avid reader devouring non-fiction and fiction with equal gusto. A squash enthusiast, he tries to fit some sport into his daily regimen to stay mentally and physically agile. He thrives on the adrenaline rush of delivering high-impact educational programs to individuals and organizations, and the ability to influence the future of work. He believes that technology and digital are at the heart of educational disruption. His mantra is to offer access to high-quality education from across the globe, leveraging technology to revolutionize the way people learn, earn and lead the future.
A 6-year-old kid from Lunglei, Mizoram, singing Vande Mataram
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Esther Hnamte was born on the 19th of June, 2016. She started singing at the age of 2 and released her first music video when she was 3. Esther is now studying in school under the sponsorship of Assam rifles HQRS, Shillong.
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer
AdvantageClub.ai
Smiti Bhatt Deorah is the Co-founder and COO of AdvantageClub.ai, an AI-powered employee engagement and rewards platform with offerings like rewards and recognition, flexible benefits, wellness, surveys, moments that matter, and communities on a single platform. In her current role, she oversees various functions, including business development, marketing, customer relations, and content operations.
An alumna of the University of California (UCLA) with a Master's degree in Computer Science, Smiti has strong experience in B2B networking and relationships. Prior to co-founding AdvantageClub.ai with Sourabh Deorah, she was a Software Engineer with one of the Big 5-Microsoft-in the US, where she was instrumental in the brand’s expansion across the globe.
Smiti envisions AdvantageClub.ai to disrupt the traditional employee experience and engagement industry. She firmly believes that corporations need to engage with their employees beyond the provident fund & corporate discount schemes extensively. With her guiding principle of “If it is not useful to the end-user, it's probably not worth doing,” Smiti has redefined AdvantageClub.ai from an HR Tech Start-Up to a multi-million-dollar venture.
Besides her entrepreneurial role, Smiti enjoys reading and discussing HR and tech, sales, business, and Indian start-up scenes. She also has a self-confessed love for Harry Potter trivia.
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Unstop
Ankit Aggarwal is the Founder & CEO of Unstop, a community engagement and hiring platform for students and freshers , where talent meets opportunities. Unstop is a playground for talented individuals to learn, upskill, showcase their skills, gain CV points, and get hired to unlock their true potential throughout their academic journey. Unstop has a community of ~7 Million+ Students and Freshers.
Ankit’s journey combines a background as a Consultant at top firms, including Sapient and Deloitte, with a passion for education, demonstrated through his involvement with Teach for India. Ankit’s dedication to Unstop has been duly recognized, earning Unstop the distinction of the Best Workforce Enablement Startup by Entrepreneur India and the prestigious Startup 50 Trailblazer Award by Dun & Bradstreet. His impactful ideas have reached global audiences through his engaging TEDx talks, and he was named among India’s 100 Great People Managers by Forbes in 2020.
CEO & Co-Founder, Refyne
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Born and raised in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, Chitresh Sharma graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Christ College, Bengaluru, in 2009. At the age of 19, Chitresh founded his first enterprise, an IT outsourcing and marketing company in Bengaluru.
The business witnessed rapid growth and put Chitresh on the map as a budding entrepreneur. However, after introspecting and being encouraged by his family to build a venture with wide-ranging social impact, in 2012, Chitresh decided to study overseas to explore new possibilities.
While pursuing a Master’s Degree in International Marketing at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Chitresh found himself surrounded by new-age business ideas and concepts. The combination inspired him to research his dissertation subject, which ultimately led to his next project.
In 2013, Chitresh co-founded Glasgow-based Swipii, a digital cashback reward platform for shoppers. During the subsequent seven years, he learned the importance of staying focused on core goals and, more critically, work culture. He concluded that pursuing a sustainable growth trajectory centered around people strategy was the key to building a successful business.
In early 2020, Chitresh returned to India to revisit the idea proposed ten years ago – creating a business that would leave a positive social impact. Chitresh’s initial research revealed a stark lack of awareness about personal finance in India. The findings inspired him to combine this observation with his learnings about the benefits of Salary On-Demand during his time in the UK, which led to the establishment of Refyne.
Chitresh noticed India’s fintech landscape broadly has two options – UPI and lending, a duopoly with rampant exploitative service prices.
India historically lacked a standard credit score system. Chitresh began investigating how this affects the unbanked and underbanked population, which are not the primary focus of premium banks and lenders. His research uncovered that the absence of formal education on personal finance, among other factors, has led to the masses often falling prey to predatory loan sharks and payday lenders, exposing themselves to a quick but costly solution.
Chitresh, via Refyne, aims to empower companies and their employees and transform them into active promoters of financial resilience and independence. Chitresh envisioned building a company where team members have an aligned vision for popularising financial wellness and fostering a culture of collective growth.
When he’s not working, Chitresh enjoys spending time with his family and reading to sharpen his skills.
Content Creator, YouTuber, Podcaster, Voiceover Artist, Angel Investor
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Siddharth Kannan is an Ace TV/Radio Host, Master of Ceremonies, Social Media Influencer & YouTube Sensation.
India’s highest-awarded Emcee!
He created history by winning 6 awards in 6 categories of hosting at the ‘BW Business World Experiential Marketing Award 2021’ by Exchange 4 Media.
He has also won many more prestigious awards:
He is a multi-lingual anchor and has a good command over English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and Marathi.
CEO and Founder, Birjendu Gupta & Associates
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Birjendu has a cumulative experience of over three decades in business, talent assessment, leadership, learning and development functions. Having worked in companies like Center for Creative Leadership, PwC, Wipro, Redington, Godrej & Boyce, Hindustan Lever, Glaxo and teaching as a visiting faculty in premier B schools like Indian Institute of Management (Shillong and Sambalpur), XLRI, Jamshedpur, Christ and Jain University, Bangalore he brings in a unique combination of academic orientation with deep business understanding. At present Birjendu is the CEO and Founder of his firm specializing in niche bespoke talent development, assessment, training, teaching and coaching.
Before this Birjendu worked as Regional Director at Center for Creative Leadership, as Head of Talent Development at PricewaterhouseCoopers India Pvt. Ltd and General Manager Corporate HRD at Wipro. Birjendu has also held leadership positions in business and sales function in Hindustan Lever, Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co. Ltd, Redington India Ltd and Wipro Ltd. Having worked with leaders across the globe gives him a rich awareness of their business requirements and relate it to people development inititatives.
MD & CEO & Member of the Board, thyssenkrupp Industries India Pvt. Ltd
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Vivek Bhatia is the MD and CEO of thyssenkrupp Industries India Pvt. Ltd. (tkII), a diversified industrial business covering a portfolio of capital goods businesses spanning Mining, Cement, Power Plants & Boilers, Sugar Plants and along with a large service business that includes asset management/O&M. tkII has been in existence for over 75 years in the country and is also the largest thyssenkrupp entity in India. Vivek has been Managing Director & CEO of tkII since 1st January, 2019. Passionate about innovation and application of new technologies in industry, Vivek has driven digitalization and sustainability topics aggressively at tkII. Prior to this role, he was CEO Asia Pacific at thyssenkrupp, based in Singapore, driving group activities for all thyssenkrupp companies in the region. Prior to this, he was the Head of Strategy, Markets and Development for the Asia Pacific region, based in Singapore.
Prior to joining thyssenkrupp, Vivek was with The Boston Consulting Group. In 2013, he was awarded a BCG Olympics Gold Medal for the most insightful and impactful client work in the region. Prior to BCG, he worked as a design engineer for refineries and pipelines at Engineers India Limited. Apart from his full time role at tkII, Vivek is the Chairman of Mining, Construction and Equipment Division (MCED) of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), member of the FICCI Power Committee, member of the FICCI Bio Energy Committee, member of the National Executive Committee of Indian Chamber of Commerce and member of the National Executive Committee of MCCIA.
He is Chairman of the Risk Management Committee and Non-Executive Independent Director on the board of GMM Pfaudler.
Vivek has extensive business experience across multiple sectors including mining, metals & mineral processing, oil and gas, renewable energy equipment, power equipment (production as well as T&D), engineered/capital goods, sugar, cement and building materials. He has worked extensively on a range of business topics spanning strategy, operations improvement, organization growth/diversification, joint ventures, PMI, carve-outs, technology licensing/transfers, business turnaround/ transformation, working capital management, operations design and re-engineering, organization design and performance management systems.
Vivek holds an MBA (from IIM Calcutta), M. Tech. (Gold Medalist from IIT Delhi) and B.E. (with honours from University of Delhi).
Vice President - Sales & Strategy, CEIPAL
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Subhash is the Vice President – Strategy, Sales & Operations for CEIPAL. In his current role he is driving CEIPAL to evolve into a Global market segment leader in the HCM solutions space. Before CEIPAL, he was responsible for helping OYO set up their flagship hotels business from scratch. Previously he was heading the Business Development arm of MySmartPrice.com, handling the top e-commerce/e-retail partners in India in the affiliate marketing area, developing new revenue opportunities, and managing the overall business cycle of the firm.
Executive Vice President & Head - Corporate Human Resources (CHRO),
Larsen & Toubro Limited
Executive Vice President & Head – Corporate Human Resources (CHRO), Larsen & Toubro Limited, an Indian Multi-national Conglomerate with diversified interests in infrastructure, heavy engineering, manufacturing, IT, technology, and financial services with operations across 30+ countries worldwide.
A highly result-oriented, HR professional with over 35 years of experience in successfully planning, designing, implementing, and managing various strategic HR Initiatives. He has been the Head of HR for various businesses, independent companies, and JVs within L&T Group, including leadership roles in the Middle East & Africa Region. He has led various transformational initiatives within the organization including digital transformation. He has been an established thought leader and widely acclaimed speaker in various national and international conferences and forums.
On the academic front, he has 3 Master’s degree (Economics, Labor Studies & Human Resource Management). He has also earned a degree in Law (LLB) and a doctorate in leadership from the University of Madras. He is also an alumnus of London Business School where he has done his Sr. Executive Management Program.
Dr. C. Jayakumar has various national and international certifications and accreditations in the Psychometric and behavioral sciences domain. He is also certified in Organizational Development from the NTL Institute of Advanced Behavioral Sciences, USA.
Dr. C. Jayakumar has made an immense contribution in the Human Resources arena over the years. He presides on the boards of esteemed professional bodies and in the Board of Studies of various prestigious educational institutions such as:
He is a life member of NIPM, NHRDN & ISTD.
Founder, The Inner Startup, Artistic Director, Roots & Wings Theatre Coach & Performer, Nautankibaaz Improv Collective
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Anshu facilitates experiential interventions using a unique blend of interactive learning and mindfulness to help organisations and individuals enhance and improve their productivity and overall well-being. Prior to establishing The Inner Startup in 2015, Anshu worked for 15 years in the corporate world as a Creative and Strategic Communications specialist. The Inner Startup works with organisations and individuals towards building more energised, empowered and emotionally intelligent communities, using techniques from theatre, mindfulness and holistic healing systems.
A creative entrepreneur and performing arts enthusiast, Anshu is trained in Forum Theatre under Adrian Jackson in London and Barbara Santos in Berlin. She runs a theatre group in her city called Roots and Wings theatre and has written and directed several plays on social issues. Anshu also runs a Playback Theatre group in her city. Her group has been performing online since the last one and half years.
Anshu is a Coach and Performer with Nautankibaaz Improv Collective. She has also been a performer with The Nursery UK, Online House Team and a Performer with Dogface Improv, based in Norwich, UK, for their online production Creatures.
VP, Head of HR Shared Services
Fujitsu International Regions
Sumit Sabharwal represents Fujitsu as the VP, Head of HR Shared Services, Fujitsu International Regions. He is also supporting Fujitsu Research India as the HR Business Partner working closely with Fujitsu Global Executive leadership. In his current role, Sumit is responsible for delivering HR transformation for Fujitsu across 40+ countries, leading multi-disciplinary teams of over 50,000 employees. Sumit is a LinkedIn Top Voice - an invitation-only community featuring a global group of experts on LinkedIn. Sumit is also the winner of “BW Businessworld 40u40 – best HR leaders to watch out for.”
Sumit has been widely spoken about in top-ranking media publications in India and is often invited as a keynote speaker, panelist, and a renowned moderator at various industry forums and events. He speaks regularly at various universities and premier management institutes delivering excellent knowledge-sharing sessions filled with anecdotes from both his personal and professional life. He is known as an authentic leader who leads from the front with empathy, compassion, responsiveness, and purpose. His love for writing and clarity of thought has got over 300+ articles published in various leading media platforms both print and online. He has regularly been dabbling with podcasts and is regarded as a ‘HeaRty’ speaker.
His core skill is people management wherein he has been able to guide people in unlocking their potential and helping deliver results while also carving a niche for themselves in the industry. He is an active listener and is a strong believer that the workplace of the future will demand leaders to start listening more and speak less.
A key driver behind Fujitsu’s people growth story, Sumit has spearheaded large scale HR transformation projects across India, Singapore, U.S.A, Philippines, Europe, and Middle East. Under the aegis of Sumit, Fujitsu GDCs (India, Malaysia, Philippines, Costa Rica, China, Poland, Portugal) have seen a slew of progressive technology interventions to attract, retain, and engage better talent. As a people champion, he has been able to introduce dynamic programs for holistic employee wellbeing with the help of evolving technologies. For over 10 years, he has been instrumental in creating a sustainable and engaging work environment at Fujitsu. Prior to his tenure at Fujitsu, Sumit has worked with several leading technology brands including Huawei, Dell, and Convergys. Practitioner with large consulting arms to enable HR transformation roadmaps. Build COEs, cross-country HR teams have been led; data-driven next gen shared services.
Curiosity drives Sumit the most and has thus also set on course to imbibe learning culture at Fujitsu. He is a firm believer in continuous learning and has inducted himself with various educational programs. He has completed his MBA in HR and Marketing (the best of both worlds) from the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, and his Bachelor of Information Systems (BIS) from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University.
Sumit's all about making our workplace super inclusive and boosting profits with smart, eco-friendly growth. He's all about seeing the big picture by being mindful, self-aware, and strategic. With over 20 years in IT industry, Sumit knows HR inside out. From training and consulting to leading HR teams nationwide and running HR for 7 GDCs, he's done it all and then some!
In his spare time, Sumit likes to paint and hit the gym. He loves to go on long drives and is regarded as a selfie-king amongst his peers.
Regional Director APAC, Top Employers Institute
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Billy Elliott is the Top Employers Institute’s Regional Director for APAC. He has worked for this global HR Certification firm, headquartered in the Netherlands for over 13 years. He has worked in variety of positions covering marketing, sales, HR auditing and operations. Exposure to the different business units and a passion for people management, has given him the strong foundation needed to oversee the APAC Certification Programme. Billy has a strong belief in the organisation’s purpose and is dedicated to accelerating the impact of people strategies to enrich the world of work.
Global Chief People Officer, Head- Marketing, People Supply Chain (RMG) & Corporate Services,
Tech Mahindra Ltd.
Harshvendra Soin is a Gold Medalist in Personnel Management and Industrial
Relations from University Business School, Chandigarh. He has also completed his Bachelor of Law from Punjab University and has nearly three decades of experience in Indian and Multinational Companies.
Harsh currently heads the Human Resources and Marketing function as Global Chief People Officer, Head- Marketing, People Supply Chain (RMG) & Corporate Services at Tech Mahindra Ltd
Before his current role, he was in a business role as CEO and Country Head at Tech Mahindra (Canada), prior to which he led Global Leadership Acquisition and Development & was also the Head - Business HR for APAC & IMEA (Telecom & Enterprise) for Tech Mahindra.
Prior to Tech Mahindra, Harsh was the Chief People Officer at Fortis Healthcare Limited. He was working with Aditya Birla Retail Limited as Chief People Officer before Fortis, and was responsible for the rapid scale up of the Organization.
Prior to Aditya Birla Retail Limited, Harsh has worked with Bharti Enterprises where he held many senior positions at the Corporate Office where he was designated as Senior Vice President – People Excellence before moving as the Head – HR for Bharti Retail Ltd. He has also worked with the Oberoi Group and Punwire Limited.
Some of the awards/recognitions he has received are :
Harsh is passionate about sports, biking, loves to travel and describes himself as a creative and a high energy person. Harsh is married to Mansi and they have two lovely children, Inayat and Harman Veer.
Executive Director & CHRO, DCM Shriram
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Sandeep was born in New Delhi, India and completed his Bachelors in Commerce from Delhi University and Masters in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (T.I.S.S), Mumbai, India.
He started his career in 1992 and over the last almost 24 years has worked across Indian and Multinational companies like SIEL, Dupont, GE, Ranbaxy and HSBC. His work has taken him across industries and geographies, having lived in Japan, Korea, Middle East and Singapore. He has held leadership positions in General Electric, where he worked for 13 years, MENA Regional HR Leader for HSBC at Dubai and with Ranbaxy as the Global Head of Human Resources. Till recently, Sandeep was the HR Head for Emerging Markets, for Xylem Incorporation, based in Singapore. He is currently associated with DCM Shriram as Chief Human Resource Officer.
Sandeep has led HR change agenda through many of his roles, setting up people strategy for growth and building organization and people DNA for business success. During his international stints, he was involved in HR strategy, business reorganization, including Mergers and Acquisitions, Talent and Growth.
Executive Director HR, Concor India
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Chief Operating Officer, HONO
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Randeep Singh is an influential leader, transformation coach, leadership builder, and a champion of operational excellence. Having served the HR industry for over 2 decades, he has a penchant for revolutionizing People practices by driving the convergence between people , technology & business outcomes.
A thorough professional, he has worked in various roles, i.e., Consulting, HR Strategy, Head Human Resources, Offshore Strategy & Operations, Business Operations, and Operations Head. In his pursuit to drive meaning full transformations, he founded WyoW in 2016– A bespoke HR consulting company to help organizations accelerate business performances.
Currently, Randeep is chairing the position of COO at HONO – an HR tech & automation company that enables organizations unleash their true potential by ensuring a happy and productive workforce.
A change agent and process advocate, Randeep has led program design, HR tech implementations; designing and implementation of HR processes and policies, talent acquisition and talent mobility for senior leadership, management of end-to-end HR operations, and successful redistribution of manpower to help turn the mere “need to have” function into a competitive advantage to help organizations save money, and be agile. He has ensured the creation of a strong foundation for managing IR scenarios to influence strategic business results.
A technology transformation champion, Randeep has carved the roadmap to technology transformation at leading organisations. He has partnered with the CAG of India, and architected the formation of a Center of Excellence in HR tech for Essar Group. Randeep has helped organizational giants like Prudential, Gokuldas images, Bharti, Maruti Udyog, and Sasken scale up the core HR operations.
As a global professional, Randeep has d managed an entire gamut of HR interventions across complex business environments in India, Australia, N. Americas, Africa, and the SEA region. With a versatile career graph, he has facilitated leadership, by working closely with leadership models to administer radical changes in performance management and succession planning to ensure employees of today are the leaders of tomorrow.
For his excellent contributions, he has been recognized as the “Super Achiever of the year-2011”, “HR technology icon” and has been featured in PwC’s leading magazines, Hourglass and many more .
Chief Talent Officer
Tata Digital
As the Chief Talent Officer at Tata Digital, Ina leads the entire talent value chain of the company, with the talent strategy aligned to the company’s strategic priorities. She has been with the Tata Group for 11 years and has held multiple leadership positions across Tata Communications and Tata 1mg.
She has over two decades of intra-disciplinary experience in human resources and has worked across sectors such as Technology, Banking and Consulting. Prior to the Tata Group, Ina has worked with BCG, HSBC and Essar Group, holding various leadership positions in HR, including global roles, with specialised experience in areas of People Strategy & Culture, Talent Management, Learning, Leadership & Organisation Development, Diversity & Inclusion, Driving large-scale transformations/change and Strategic Resourcing.
She is a student of human-centric leadership, and endeavours in increasing her quotient of adaptability, resilience and empathy in her leadership. She excels at partnering with CXOs and business leaders to build & execute their people strategy to solve complex people problems that impact business outcomes. She remains fascinated by the evolution of the people function in its contributions to creating value for the top and bottom-line growth for the company. In 2022, she brought home 3 Brandon Hall Awards (Academy awards equivalent for HR function) for creating change programs that impacted business outcomes.
Ina completed her Post Graduate Diploma in Human Resources from K.J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, Mumbai and also holds a degree in Economics and English Literature from Panjab University.
CHRO
Mphasis
Ayaskant currently heads the human resources function for Mphasis globally.
He brings with him more than two and half decades of human resources experience spanning multiple industries in areas like work force planning, talent acquisition, talent management, C&B, M&A, L&D and Analytics.
Prior to his current role, Ayaskant has worked with Wipro for 11 years including being the CHRO for Wipro Enterprises and before that has played multiple roles in Wipro Limited including leading the human resources function for service lines as well as providing leadership to many COEs globally such as leadership hiring, talent management and learning & development. Prior to Wipro, Ayaskant has worked with organizations like General Electric, Infosys Technologies and Larsen & Toubro. In General Electric, Ayaskant had more than a decade long stint with more than 8 years with GE Healthcare and 3 years with GE Corporate.
Ayaskant is a regular speaker in many other Industry forums and also mentors a couple of start- ups in Human Resources.
Ayaskant has done his engineering from NIT Surat and his master’s in human resources from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar.
Head People & Culture, IT & Administration
RCG Global Services
With over 26 years of experience, Satish Rajarathnam is a seasoned Human Resources professional who has held various HR leadership positions across multiple industries. Satish has continually been at the helm of strategic resourcing, organization change management, HR Business consulting & Agile transformation, as well as leadership and talent management.
Satish is associated with several industry groups and associations such as SHRM, Agile Leadership, LEGO serious Play, PCMM, Six Sigma, ISABs India and NFNLP, among others from which he has received certifications marking him a qualified practitioner. At RCG, he is currently responsible for Global Staffing & Talent Transformation and Heads HR, Administration & IT for APAC.
Satish’s leadership experience spans across organisations such as Mphasis, Cognizant, HCL Technologies, and Siemens. He has also been the recipient of awards such as Forbes Top 30 Talent Leaders of 2023, Asia’s 100 HR Power leaders, Global Achievers Award 2022, Indian Achievers Award 2021, the Top 100 HR Tech Minds Award, Top 50 Aspiring Researchers award and the HR Excellence Award, from the Government of Rajasthan and Higher & Technical Education, Maharashtra. Outside his experience with HR, Satish has built a reputation as a TEDx speaker. As an entertainer and an illusionist & Mentalist, he has worked on over 1300 performances in association with various corporate houses and international workgroups. As part of giving back to the society he is associated with Udavum Karangal an Orphanage at Chennai and as a Corporate Advisory Board member with Chandigarh University.
Satish has authored a book on AI, co-authored 2 books on HR and has 8 patent applications published. He is a research Scholar from Swiss School of Management, Geneva, and a postgraduate in General Management from the Indian School of Business (ISB) and National University of Singapore (NUS)
Chief People Officer, Page Industries
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Ravi Kumar is a dynamic and seasoned professional with over 25 years of extensive and well-rounded experience in Human Resources.
Since his appointment in April 2022 as Chief People Officer, Page Industries, Ravi has focused his effort on successfully leading his team in driving sustainable People Practices that impact the organization’s culture, leading to innovative business outcomes. With his strategic direction, Ravi aims to enable the exponential growth of the company and ensure a brighter future for all its stakeholders by collaborating closely with the executive team.
Best known for his significant contributions to the industry in India and overseas, Ravi remains focused on building Leadership capabilities and guiding relationships, both internally and externally. Prior to this assignment, Ravi has proven success in his capacity as Head of People & Culture (India, Middle East & Africa) at the F. Hoffmann La Roche Group in its affiliates in India, Singapore and the Middle East. During the course of his career, Ravi has held multiple HR Leadership roles in national and global organizations like the Saint-Gobain Group and Larsen & Toubro Limited.
His peers and associates hold him dear for his coaching and mentoring ability, and his focus on developing culture and talents within the organization. Ravi holds a graduate degree in Bachelor of Science from Ravenshaw College and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from the reputed Xavier Institute of Social Service.
When not at work, Ravi enjoys photography and loves to travel.
Senior VP & Global Head - HR Centers of Excellence, EXL
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Sanjay Dutt has 30 years of experience in the industry and is well recognized for his work around driving organizational strategies through Talent Management, Capability Development , Leading large scale Digital HR transformation & operations and Employee Engagement.
Sanjay joined EXL in 2010 and is the Global Lead for the HR Centers of Excellence. This includes Recruitment ,Capability Development ,Digital HR Operations, Communication, Statutory Compliance and Employee Relations at EXL, globally. He also provides leadership to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Global Employee Wellness initiatives.
His key focus is to create and drive an integrated Talent strategy, in line with EXL’s long term strategy. This includes building and accelerating on Talent engine which combines Talent acquisition and Talent development from within to proactively build and engage a talent pool comprising of digital, domain and leadership capabilities.
Sanjay has led the setup of the EXL Center for Talent as an engine for sourcing and building talent at scale to drive EXL’s growth. Over the years, he has been instrumental in embedding digital, sales, domain & leadership capabilities through a focused learning academy model which creates deep expertise in target capability areas.
He has envisioned and established a futuristic digitally transformed HR Operations, Talent Management & Learning Ecosystem at EXL driving enhanced employee experience, improved productivity, expanding talent base across geos, and an accelerating digital, open source self- learning culture.
Prior to joining EXL, Sanjay was a Partner at Accenture, where he led capability development for their outsourcing organization. He also previously served as Director for Performance Enhancement & Training at American Express.
Sanjay holds a Bachelors degree in Electronics from the Delhi University and an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, India. He is a
prominent industry thought leader, and contributes to several HR forums and institutions globally.
CHRO, Biocon
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Naveen is an experienced professional who brings a rich understanding of global Human Capital Strategy to assist businesses with the challenging task of navigating the digital economy. By combining familiarity of renowned consultancies like Accenture with in-depth understanding on factors affecting the future of talent & work, Naveen offers trusted advice, execution and forward-thinking solutions to business leaders around the world. His 25 years’ experience in HR spans across several industries including Hospitality, Supply Chain, Banking, Retail, Travel and IT in 30+ geographies.
Naveen’s experiences can be summarized in 3 broad themes with HR as anchor. The first in People, Talent & Culture leading functions for Accenture India, HCL Global, Al Futtaim UAE and Standard Chartered GDS. The 2nd theme being Consulting, platform selling, driving revenue & client success with Arrows (UK, NL), KPISOFT (Asia, EMEA) and Accenture (India) Consulting. The 3rd theme in driving digital strategies for Accenture Enabling functions as CIO and other technology led transformations. His current assignment is to design & deploy enterprise performance solutions for the UAE government (63 departments, 90,000 people)
All of Naveen’s achievements have either been monetized or recognized and awarded including – a mention in the HBS for Talent transformation leading to a 800bps increase in bottom line in HCL, hiring 30000/annum for 5 continuous years spread over multiple businesses, skills and 30+ geographies, setting up 3 distinct GDS (Shared services) for Standard Chartered in early 2000s for 40 countries, selling GDS solutions for Arrows in Europe, setting up the first internal Shared services (ABS) for Accenture. Naveen has received several accolades for all the above landmarks.
Naveen has been central to drive employer brands to high performance including HCL - LinkedIn TBI (Talent Brand Index) from #8 to #2 globally. He led several business transformations including the global talent transformation when Publicis Sapient pivoted to Digital business transformation.
Recognised as a thought-leader across Human Capital issues, as varied as global talent management, digital thinking, workplace diversity and international development, Naveen has taken to the stage at prestigious events such as the United Nations WEP forum, delivering passionate insights into the benefits of gender diversity in the workplace. Naveen’s commitment to development for women lies at the heart of his close involvement with the Arrows Group Foundation. Naveen continues to support 200 under privileged girls through a 6-year scholarship and invests in their employability skills.
He has authored several articles for Gartner and recently authored a book on philosophy, ready to go to the press
What Naveen brings to the table for business leaders is to draw on his vision for managing and integrating global people & culture practices, seamlessly boost productivity or drive digital business transformation . Building on Naveen’s expertise of 25 years at the innovative forefront of the global human capital practice, stakeholders have looked at him as a trusted partner as they develop global strategies for expansion and growth.
His credo has always been, ‘when successful – look outside the window and when faced with failure, look in the mirror’.
Naveen is location agnostic.
CEO & Founder, CEIPAL
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Sameer Penakalapati is a serial entrepreneur who is dedicated to advising and investing in technology startups, specifically in the HR & AI space. In the past 10 years, Sameer has founded and acquired over six companies, including a staffing firm, multiple SaaS platforms, and a digital marketing agency, serving thousands of customers around the world. Sameer's key interests include talent acquisition, talent engagement, and total talent management. As a regular contributor of thought leadership content for the HR industry and beyond, Sameer was named in both the Forbes HR Council and the Fast Company Executive Board. To date, Sameer has received numerous awards and recognitions for his work, including accolades from Inc500/5000, Rochester top 100, Deloitte Fast 500, Forbes Best Startup Employers, USPAACC, SIA Fastest Growing Companies, and others. Sameer also takes an active approach to Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, contributing to philanthropic activities in the US and India focused on children's education and youth development.
CHRO, Lead School
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With over 25 years of industry experience under his belt, Rohit has been the leading the HR function for various organizations. In his last role he was the CHRO for Paytm since December 2019 where he led the strategic HR agenda for the company.
Prior to this role, Rohit was with Accenture where he was responsible for Accenture’s talent strategy and HR service delivery & operations across all businesses in India..
Rohit has previously also worked with Microsoft, where he served as head of Human Resources for Microsoft India. Prior to this, Rohit spent 11 years at GE in various HR leadership roles across multiple businesses like Energy, Capital, Engineering, Corporate and Aviation both in India and the United States. He has also worked with Eicher Tractors, Cadence Design Systems and Bausch & Lomb.
Rohit is a graduate of SRCC Delhi. He has subsequently also done his MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur. He is married to Swati, who is also an MBA from XLRI and is currently working with SHRM in India. They have 2 children, Dhruv (who is an undergraduate in CS from UCLA, working with Amazon in NY) and Kanhav (who is an undergraduate from Swarthmore in Mathematical Statistics & Economics) and is working with Charles River Associates in Washington DC.
Director, Strategic Accounts & Partnerships, APAC, KellyOCG
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22 years of professional experience in the talent consulting space. Worked across recruitment and staffing, skill development and HR tech areas. Handled regional, national and international roles with companies like Godrej & Boyce, Randstad, Skills Academy, IMechE-London, Talent-Tattoo. With KellyOCG for the last one year as Director for Strategic Accounts and Partnerships for APAC. In the current role Allwyn helps organizations meet their strategic hiring needs by designing and delivering enterprise RPO solutions for industries such as technology, banking & financial sector, Retail, Engineering, Pharma & healthcare
Country Head & Managing Director, Kincentric
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Anurag is India Market Leader. He consults with clients around consulting areas such as Operating model & Organization Design, Workforce Planning, Leadership Transformation, Shared Services; HR Analytics; Digital HR; Transformational Change Management - Developed & augmented solution approaches & methodologies, tool kits in areas of Organization Restructuring, Strategic Workforce Planning, HR Operating Model (SS/MS).
Anurag manages clients in sectors such as, Industrial Manufacturing & Automotive, Consumer Market & e-Commerce, Technology, GCC (Global Capability Centres), Energy & Natural Resources, Financial Services
Experience
Anurag is a management consulting business leader, advising Promotors, Investors, Boards, CEOs, CXO, CHROs.
Prior to Kincentric, Anurag was a KPMG Partner & Service Line Leader, Aon Organization Effectiveness Practice Leader; Mercer Leadership & Org Performance Business Leader; Hewitt Culture & Engagement Leader.
He is a regular speaker in capacity of a thought leader and expert, at multiple industry and academic forums like SHRM, CII, NHRDN, NIPM, AIMA, FICCI, Economic Times, People Matters & eminent business schools like IIM-B, MDI, IMI, IIM-I.
He is a seasoned Organization, Leadership, Talent and Human Resources expert with over 23 years of experience.
CHRO
Orient Electric
Aditya is the Chief Human Resources officer at Orient Electric (CK Birla Group), and is responsible for building the culture and the human capital of an organization that is undergoing significant transformation. He is passionate about leading the people agenda that ensures that we get the right people, in the right roles, with the right capabilities to drive differentiated performance and make a significant impact in our Industry.
He has over two decades of experience that spans across multiple facets of HR including Performance, Reward and Benefits, Business Relationship Management, HR Transformation & Change Management, Employee Engagement, HR Technology & Service Delivery Strategy, Shared Services and Global Payroll Models. He is a results-driven leader, who has worked in Singapore, India and London, managing global teams in a highly matrixed global environment. In all of his roles, he has created space to drive change through a multi discipline approach that leverages all aspects of Human Capital Management, Technology and Culture to drive productivity and performance.
Prior to Orient he has worked across sectors in marquee organisations like Clix Capital, Airtel, Standard Chartered Bank and Hewitt Associates (Aon).
Founder, Nautankibaaz Improv Collective Design Head, Tata Digital
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Ankur has always been enamored by storytelling and was a part of amateur theatre for the longest time, till he discovered 'improv'. His journey in improv is a 6 year old passionate pursuit into community building. A community which is based on empathy, play, opportunity and sticking to one's personality. He firmly believes that improv has a lot of answers to tough societal questions that we face currently.
Ankur is an NID (National Institute of Design) and CBS (College of Business Studies) alumnus. He got most of his initial improv chops in Seattle at the Unexpected Productions, where he completed all the six levels of learning improv under Randy Dixon. He has trained in Spolin Theatre Games with Gary Shwartz and Aretha Sills. Beyond the regular classes, he has trained in workshops under Jay Sukow, Johnathan Pitts, Patti Stiles, Dave Razowsky and Naveen Kaushik.
Founder & Managing Director
ZingHR
Prasad Rajappan is a seasoned HR Tech leader and Founder of ZingHR.
With 30+ years in ERP, BPR, and HR, he's driving ZingHR's growth as an employee-centric HCM platform. Previously at Mahindra & Mahindra, Ernst & Young, and Reliance, he led large-scale SAP implementations.
At ZingHR, his innovative 'OutcomationTM Index' methodology delivers tangible business outcomes through 'Power of One' HR Tech suite. ZingHR focuses on HR transformation to meet People, Profit, and Planet goals with ESG-led OKRs and KPIs. Under his leadership, ZingHR has a global presence and caters to millions of users.
Founder, HROne
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Karan Jain is the Founder at HROne. He is a true visionary who recognises the crucial role of HRs in the work landscape and intends to maximize productivity through automation.
Under his guidance, HROne has seen phenomenal leadership role development and revenue growth. For him, the real success lies in positively impacting the professional lives of people at his and his client’s organizations.
Head - HR, Microsoft
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Ira Gupta leads the HR function for Microsoft India which has an employee footprint that spans research, engineering product development, sales and marketing, industry solutions delivery and customer experience & support, spread across 9 cities across the country. In this role, her priorities include aligning the organization's people strategy with business objectives, building a transformational and diverse organization, talent development and implementing effective HR systems and polices for 20000+ employees at Microsoft India.
Prior to Microsoft, Ira was part of the India leadership team at GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, where, for over 16 years, she worked in various leadership roles across HR, Sales and Marketing, Communications and CSR. She also set up shared services across businesses. Ira is an Independent Director on a number of company boards.
CHRO, AirAsia India
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Anjali Chatterjee, CHRO AirAsia India Is a Talent Management and Development professional with over three decades of experience across sectors encompassing hospitality, service, manufacturing and telecom at global as well as national capacities.
Her key focus is to facilitate the creation and deployment of effective talent strategies in line with business objectives. She strongly believes that organizations with robust talent management and development strategies along with the integration of analytics enable stronger business outcomes by having talent that is better than the competition. She is passionate about technology and believes that all businesses require the right combination of HCM technology combined with a culture that focuses on compassion and caring.
Chief Human Resources Officer
Advantage Club
Raj is an official Forbes HR Council member and a well-known and recognised HR professional in the industry. In his two decades of global, cross-cultural HR experience, he has worked in various industries, including IT/ITES, Oil & gas, Pharmaceuticals, Engineering and Manufacturing. He has lived and practised HR in the Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, Russia, and Europe.
He is currently the Chief Human Resources Officer and Chief Strategy Officer at Advantage Club (AC). It’s a Global HR Technology (SaaS) platform serving 3.5 million employees in employee engagement, well-being, financial health, benefits, perks, rewards and recognition on a single platform. Headquartered in Delaware, Advantage Club has a strong presence in approximately 100+ countries worldwide, serving more than 1000+ Corporates and offering exclusive deals on more than 10,000+ brands.
In his previous role, Raj led Concentrix's global digital talent strategy across 40 nations. Additionally, he spearheaded the line HR department for 70,000 employees across 13 locations in India and the ASEAN region. Raj played a crucial role in the company's expansion into Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the United Arab Emirates. He also started the automation and modernization of Concentrix's HR operation. Leading newspapers, business journals, TV stations, and international conferences feature his opinions and perspectives. He has also received many prestigious industry honours for his various contributions.
His formal qualifications include PGDM from Symbiosis and further study in Digital Transformation from Columbia Business School, Managerial & Leadership Effectiveness from IIMA, and Design Thinking & Innovation from Emeritus, Singapore. He is also a certified M&A Specialist from Aon Hewitt.
Executive Director, HR India & Asia Pacific & Global HRBP for Global Safety Services, Parexel International
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Mona Puri is a Human Resource leader with over 28 years of progressive experience in the Health Care & Life Sciences industry across India, Japan, Asia Pacific & Oceania managing regional teams in highly matrixed global organizations. Currently , at Parexel as Executive Director Human Resources, she is the Regional HR Leader, leading HR for India & Asia Pacific as well as supports a SBU (Global Safety Services) as the Global HRBP.
In all of her roles, she has adopted the approach that leverages people, culture, technology and networks to drive engagement & performance. A strong espouser of business ethics and integrity and believer in equal opportunity for all. Has been breaking the gender norms from start of her career and ensuring women in leadership roles are a natural evolution of a company’s culture and environment .
She started her career in Sales Management & Operations …and in her previous assignments she has been associated with InVentiv Health as Head HR for Asia Pacific, with United Health Group, as the Human Capital Partner for India/APAC and Eli Lilly India, in various progressive roles spanning Operations, Learning & Development and Human Resource.
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
Vantage Circle
Partha is the CEO and Co-founder of Vantage Circle. He has over two decades of expertise in product and executive management. Partha has a proven track record of scaling great businesses and was instrumental in developing and launching 99acres.com.
He gained remarkable expertise in various industrial verticals when he worked for Aricent, Hughes Software Systems, and Bharat Electronics. He has gained deep insights in unlocking employee productivity using employee recognition and engagement through his experience with several companies and HR departments. His strategic skills in a learning and entrepreneurial environment, where complexity can require a dive into the content and creativity, problem-solving skills and intelligence are maximally utilized.
Partha is a strong believer in being able to have an impact together with a team. He leads the company with innovative flair, a reason why Vantage Circle enjoys a sustained competitive position in the market. Under Partha's leadership, Vantage Circle has become a globally recognized HR Tech company, establishing itself as one of the leading Employee Rewards and Recognition SaaS-software in India, UAE and North America.
Sr. Director Operations, SHRM APAC & MENA
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Archana Jerath has been with SHRM for 6 years and is Business Leader, Operations for SHRM India and APAC. She is responsible for Conferences and Events (India, MENA, APAC) ; SHRM Certification and Membership growth in India and APAC, B2C Sales and driving various initiatives in the region. She has Twenty Three years of experience of which she spent the last Thirteen years in the HR Industry. In the past Archana has worked with TV-18 (BBC World, CNN, Star etc.), GE Capital International Services, Kelly Services and IKYA Human Capital Solutions in various roles prior to joining SHRM. Archana is result oriented and has successfully led large teams across various verticals and has an expertise in Business and project management. She is Six-Sigma Green Belt Certified from GE and has led quality projects in Lean Six-Sigma, ISO implementation and Internal Systems and procedures from the ground-up.
Director of Sales APAC, Remote
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Jane is the Director of Sales - APAC at Remote and she is on a mission to bring Remote to APAC by enabling companies of all sizes to grow without boarders and to build and scale a world-class sales team. Prior to her role at Remote, Jane was the Vice President at AlphaSights, a knowledge-on-demand platform, leading their strategy consulting and private equity businesses across APAC as well as heading up their Korean operations. She helped build AlphaSights from a start-up to scale up company, with teams across APAC, running a multi-million dollar book of business. Jane graduated from King's College London in Law and has also gained her Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from The College of Law. She is Korean and lives in Hong Kong with her husband and two daughters.
Executive Vice President - HR, Learning & Development
ITC Hotels
Mr. Sanjay Bose currently heads HR for the hospitality and travel businesses of ITC Ltd. ITC Ltd is a USD 7.5 Billion conglomerate of India and its hospitality business is the third largest in the country with a workforce in excess of 16000 people.
During his 2 ½ decades in Human Resources, Mr Bose has had extensive experience in the areas of organisation restructure, M&A, HR Transformation and Total Rewards. He also provides strategic leadership to the organisation as part of the Management Committee.
In his previous assignment, Mr Bose headed global HR operations for Indian Hotels Company Ltd (The Taj Group), a part of Tata conglomerate, with responsibilities spanning 12 countries including US, UK and South Africa.
He has a MBA in HR (XISS Ranchi) and has completed his Advanced General Management Programme from IIM Bangalore and Advanced Leadership Programme from Stephen Ross School of Business Management, University of Michigan.
Mr Bose has served on various professional bodies and is currently on the CII Committees for IR and Skill Development at the national level and the Advisory Committee of NHRDN at regional level. At the global level, he serves on the Executive Committee of the Global Sustainability Hospitality Alliance, London -UK.
He is passionate about education and lends his expertise to institutions like MDI Gurgaon, IMT Ghaziabad, Tata Institute of Social Services, WGSHA -Manipal through participation in Governing Boards, Board of Studies and Admission panels etc.
His contributions in the field of HR have won him multiple accolades including CHRO of the Year -2019 by Business World and Best CHRO by W.E. Matter in 2022.
Principal Advisor
SHRM India, APAC & MENA
A visionary and versatile thought leader with over two and half decades of rich experience across business and HR consulting domains in delivering advisory solutions to clients on critical HR issues and best practices across India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Middle East and Pakistan. Proven excellence in establishing practices, teams, businesses from inception and accelerating profitability through path-breaking strategies and operational excellence.
He has worked with organizations like PwC, Hewitt Associates, Schneider Electric, Mercer, KPMG and most recently as the Managing Director at Center for Creative Leadership – India and South Asia. Currently Muniinder is the Principal Advisor for SHRM in India, APAC & MENA.
Muniinder also held the position of Joint Secretary for the Delhi & NCR Chapter of The National HRD Network (NHRDN) and Council Member of Young Mind’s Council, Member Forbes Human Resources Council and Advisory Board Member at XLRI Center for Gender Equality and Inclusive Leadership (CGEIL), Authored several articles on leadership and a regular speaker at industry conferences to share his lessons of experiences.
Chief People Officer, Standard Group Ltd
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Mr. Arif Shahriar, currently Chief People Officer of Standard Group Ltd. A Leading readymade garments manufacturer in both Woven & knitting products, produced in its 18 factories having more than 450+ than 55K+ production lines with 55,000+ employees in Bangladesh. Mr. Shahriar has more than thirty-five years of work experience in the field of General Management, Human Resource Management, and Manufacturing & Supply Chain Management.
Prior to joining Standard group in July 2022, he worked in Apex Footwear Ltd. as their Chief People & Culture Officer for 2 years, Rahimafrooz Bangladesh ltd. for 14 years as their Chief People & Business Performance Office in the corporate office.
Mr. Shahriar started his corporate career in British American Tobacco in 1987 and worked for Nineteen years. In BAT he was in the key positions like Head of Human Resources, Manufacturing Manager in Bangladesh, and Corporate HR Business Partner in BAT Australasia.
Mr. Shahriar is a graduate Engineer in Electrical Engineering from USA and MBA from North South University. He has key interest & skills are in Strategic HR, Change Management, and leadership development. He was also part time teaching faculty in MBA programs in IBA of Dhaka University & other Private universities like AIUB, Southeast University and Canadian University of Bangladesh.
Senior VP HR, HCL Technologies
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Senior Vice President HR (Global Head Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Talent Development & Employee Engagement)
A Human Resource Leader with 29 years of work experience spanning across multiple facets of HR. Currently leading a multidimensional global portfolio encompassing, Diversity & Inclusion, Talent Development, Employee Experience & Engagement.
The charter of Diversity and Inclusion is based on the premise that an increased degree of diversity, inclusion and a ‘sense of belonging’ in an organization translates into smarter, more creative, innovative and empathetic workforce. This in turn empowers the organization to achieve competitive business advantage. The focus is on creating a culture of Inclusion and mitigating bias.
As a Talent Development leader, her forte lies in designing and developing a Business Context based Talent Development Strategy to strengthen the organizational Culture and Capability, showcasing a clear business impact.
The third dimension to the role includes the entire spectrum of Employee Experience & engagement where the focus is to deploy effective strategies for improving performance and productivity.
CEO & Co-Founder, TartanHQ
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Tartan is built with a very big mission with a social purpose, to help millions of people that are also in the workforce in India and globally become financially healthier and have a happier work life. Understanding the pain for HR in delivering holistic benefits by dealing with multiple vendors and spending without creating real impact.
Before this, Pramey was Risk Management and Analytics professional at marquee names like HSBC Bank, HDFC Bank, and Citi Bank. Before building Tartan, he was heading Risk & HR Analytics for IDFC First Bank. He has led various projects, and large teams built digital data-driven products and delivered business insights. Graduated from BITS, Pilani thrives in utilizing data to solve real-world problems.
CHRO, Hindustan Times Media Group
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Paras is a seasoned HR Leader, backed by 19 years’ experience in organizations ranging from global to local, start-up to mature, manufacturing to retail and listed to not-for-profit organizations. Currently he is CHRO at Hindustan Times Media Group. Post Graduate from Symbiosis International University, Paras is passionate about telling stories and sharing his experiences in variety of conferences, webinars, B-School events and social media.
Before joining HT Media, Paras was Head, Group HR at Motherson Group and responsible for managing the HR function for the Group’s 1,35,000 employees across 41 countries. Prior to which, he worked for 17 years at Aditya Birla Group in various HR leadership roles across sectors, companies & countries which includes stints at Hindalco, Corporate HR, Minacs Philippines, BITS Pilani, Madura Garments, Pantaloons, Birla Carbon US and Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail.
Behavioural Facilitator & Inclusion Champion
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Divyanshu Ganatra is one of the world’s leading speakers on leadership, inclusion, and innovation. It is just a bonus that he is also one of the most motivating and inspiring individuals you will ever meet in this day and age.
Sought after motivational speaker for hundreds of Fortune 500 companies and CXO forums | India’s first blind solo pilot | India’s first blind tandem cyclist to cycle from Manali to Khardung La—the highest motorable road in the world | First blind Indian to summit Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa—the tallest freestanding mountain in the world | Touched the lives of over 50 million people across the world | Speaker at leading TedX events | Guest faculty at multiple IITs, IIMs and universities in the US | Inclusion ambassador for governments in India and abroad.
Clientele includes Adani Power, Aditya Birla Finance, Big Bazaar, Capco, Citibank, Cognizant, Deloitte, IMA India, JP Morgan, Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra & Mahindra, Maybelline New York, Sintex Industries, Tata and Volkswagen.
Divyanshu lost his eyesight to glaucoma at the age of 19. A severe bout of tuberculosis almost had doctors declare him dead. As he was working to get his life back on track, he got a earful of free advice from wellwishers and rehabilitation counselors:
“Your life is over.” “You can only stay at home now.”
“Since you are blind, you can only make cane furniture or chalk now.”
Divyanshu soon found that his blindness or health struggles were not a problem. It was people’s attitudinal barriers and their stereotypes that tried to tell him that he could no longer do what he wanted to do—learn computers or make a career in IT, study psychology and pursue his Masters in Cognitive Neuroscience, or follow his love for adventure and the outdoors. He did not allow the world to decide what he could or could not do. Fast forward to today, Divyanshu continues to shatter stereotypes and prejudices, turning every adversity into an opportunity to emerge as one of India’s most successful people in the fields of IT, diversity and inclusion, and behavioral facilitation.
Divyanshu today works closely with the leadership of top global companies to help them and their teams push their boundaries, challenge themselves and think beyond the “possible”. Needless to say, such a power-packed individual has attracted quite some attention. Divyanshu has been covered extensively by some of the world’s most popular media—BBC, The Times of India, The Hindu, CNNIBN, CNBC, Star Plus, Condé Nast Traveller, Huffington Post and more.
Director, IIM Raipur
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Ram Kumar Kakani is Director at the IIM Raipur, an institute of national importance, and on sabbatical at the IIM Kozhikode. Ram started as a technocrat in the corporate sector and moved towards the academic world, focusing on Finance-Performance-Strategy. Earlier, Ram was faculty at XLRI Jamshedpur and LBSNAA Mussoorie. Abroad, he worked as an academic in Denmark, Nigeria, Singapore, and UAE. Ram has co-authored books with publishers ranging from Cambridge, Sage to Routledge. His textbooks with McGraw-Hill run into multiple editions. In the last one decade, Ram has moved towards the Leadership and Governance domains to explore socially impactful initiatives aimed at Public Administration, including holding a director position of a registered society, Government of India’s National Centre for Leadership Development & Competency Assessment (NCLDCA).
Ram believes ‘often people are competent but not actionable.’ Thus, Ram hopes to consolidate his learnings by merging his cross functional insights in Business, Financial Analysis, Public Policy, and Leadership Development– and make life more meaningful.
CEO, Higher Ed business - Veranda Learning Solutions Ltd
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Aditya Malik, is a successful tech-entrepreneur and CEO of Higher Ed business of Veranda Learning Solutions Ltd, one of the leading new age, technology driven interactive education companies.
Prior to Joining Veranda he was the founder of Ed tech company Talentedge and was also working as a Senior Partner at Lumis Partners (a private Equity fund). He has also worked as Senior Vice President & Head - Migrations and Quality and SVP & Head HR at Bank of America. His past experience includes stints as a AVP, GE Consumer Finance SBI cards and VP Operations at GECIS.
Aditya is a dynamic thought leader with over twenty eight years of professional experience and proven leadership and track record in the areas of new business set up, revenue expansion, sales, risk management and global cross boundary operations. He is a driven and motivated professional adept at multi-tasking as well as managing and leading even under stressful or uncertain conditions.
Aditya is a certified Master Black Belt and also holds a Masters in Business Administration from Pune University.
Global Head - HR
Incture Technologies
Veera Reddy is an Air Force Veteran and an experienced HR Leader with over 22 years of experience. He started his career with Indian Air Force as a short Service Commissioned officer and thereafter, worked in IT industry with Wipro, Genpact and Cigniti. He is currently with Incture Technologies as Head - People and Culture.
Veera has extensive experience in HR leadership and specializes in HR digital transformation, organization design and development, employee experience, and leadership development. A strong proponent of Diversity and Inclusion, Veera believes in empathy and compassion as the most important values of leadership”.
Co-Founder & CEO, OnGrid & eLockr
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Piyush Peshwani is the co-founder and CEO at OnGrid and eLockr. Before co-founding OnGrid and eLockr with his friend Vineet Bansal from their IIT Bombay days.
Through eLockr, he envisions the creation of a modern working world where organizations issue digital credentials to people that can be verified instantly with their electronic consent.
Piyush was a part of the team that built and rolled out the Aadhaar platform, with close to 1.4 billion people enrolled, and millions of authentication and KYC transactions happening daily. Piyush has also advised the Government of India, and philanthropic organizations like the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Direct Benefits Transfer, Financial Inclusion, and Public Healthcare.
Piyush is passionate about technology that creates a level-playing field for people to access opportunities and achieve upward mobility in society.
Senior Vice President, & Head HR, R1 RCM India
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Swati is Senior Vice President, and Head Human Resources for R1 RCM India.
With an overall experience of over 20 years, she has proven success in identifying innovative, global, and regional solutions to drive organizational effectiveness, talent strategies, compensation programs, performance management and HR operational excellence activities across sectors (Healthcare, Banking, Analytics, Telecom and IT).
Swati has been consistently delivering change and transformations with multi-industry exposure across the country. She is known for fast, agile, and proven leadership in business Strategy, Human Resource Management, Advisory and Leadership Development.
Swati is a passionate business leader with a unique experience of establishing complete HR and Performance Management systems along with successfully developing and implementing HR Strategy for organizations to create culture of performance, emotional involvement & successful teams.
She has completed her master’s from MDI Gurgaon and an Executive Development Program from Kellogg School of Management
CEO, Kontempore
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With over 33 years of experience in India and abroad Dr. Sanjay Muthal has a rich background in Consulting, Strategic HR, Recruitment, L&D and Organisation Development.
Dr. Muthal is an Investor and Consultant with Refyne - Asia’s largest financial wellness suite provider. He is also founder and CEO of Kontempore Leadership & Business Solutions which is in the space of Search, Leadership Consulting, HR Technology & Analytics.
Dr. Muthal has held several leadership positions across the HR function. In his last role he was President - HR, Piramal Group. He has also worked with RPG Group, Hinduja Group, MNCs like Parke Davis and Hoechst and had stints in the Middle East and the UK. He also provides strategic advice to many Boards on leadership development and organisation restructuring.
A globally recognized HR influencer, some of his recognitions include “India’s Greatest HR Professional” by World HRD Congress, “HR Achiever” at India Brand Summit, “Outstanding contributions in the field of HR” presented at Asia Pacific HR Congress.
He serves as an Independent Director on the Board of LIC AMC and Mutual Fund. He is also on the Board of NHRDN, the largest HR professional body in India.
Former Director, IOCL
Advisor-NSDC
Mr. Ranjan Kumar Mohapatra is Director (Human Resources) on the Board of Indian Oil Corporation (IndianOil) with effect from 19.2.2018. Prior to this, he was IndianOil’s Executive Director in charge of West Bengal State Office. A Mechanical Engineering graduate from BITS, Pilani, with a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, Mr. Mohapatra joined IndianOil in 1987 and has since worked on varied assignments, including Terminal Operations, Supply Chain Management & Logistics. With in-depth knowledge and acumen in Supply Chain & Logistics, he had been associated with evacuation of finished products from IndianOil’s domestic refineries, and product upliftment agreements with stand-alone refiners as well as other oil marketing companies (OMCs).
Mr. Mohapatra was also one of the chief architects of the auto fuel quality (BS-III/BS-IV) upgradation programmes of OMCs in India. Between April 2010 and Jan. 2012, he headed the Operations function of IndianOil’s Maharashtra State Office, which oversees the largest number of bulk storage terminals & depots in a State. As Managing Director of IndianOil(Mauritius) Ltd., the Company’s overseas subsidiary, during 2012-2015, Mr. Mohapatra led a team of young professionals, registering sizeable growth in market share and profitability. He was also on the Board of Mer Rouge Oil Storage Terminal, a joint venture formed by four MNCs to set up modern oil storage facilities in Mauritius. Under his inspiring leadership as head of IndianOil’s West Bengal State Office, the OMCs released a record 10.5 lakh PMUY (Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana) connections in the first 116 days of the scheme, that is, over 9,000 new connections a day.
Always eager to try out new things, Mr. Mohapatra achieved cashless transaction facilities at almost all Indian Oil fuel stations in West Bengal State and piloted a smart auto-fuel complex that has come up at Rajarhat in Kolkata. Being a person with human touch, Mr. Mohapatra initiated his direct interaction with Young Officers of different functions in the State Office, which has been greatly appreciated. He also conceptualized and launched the now acclaimed Fab-14, which is a novel mentoring system within the channel partners. Widely travelled in Europe, USA, Africa and Southeast Asia, Mr. Mohapatra presented papers in several national and international forums and published a number of articles in international journals and supply chain reference books
CHRO, Zaggle
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Latha has 16 years of all-rounded experience and expertise in multiple dimensions of Human Resources. Her experience includes organization design and development, business partnering, leadership hiring, compensation & benefits, employee experience, rewards program, and culture integration. Prior to joining Zaggle, Latha has held various HR leadership positions in organizations like Epigamia, Reliance Digital Health and Reliance Lifesciences, Herbalife Nutrition, Nielsen and Kantar group (WPP). Latha is a post-graduate in Human Resources from Symbiosis University and a commerce graduate from Mumbai University.
Latha plays a significant role in further strengthening Zaggle’s employer brand value & market leadership position in India. She is responsible for defining and strengthening Zaggle’s employee value proposition, driving talent strategy, building people capabilities, and spearheading various talent initiatives. Under her leadership, the company aims to hire professionals across several disciplines such as data scientists, business development, sales, product, tech, etc. as part of its strategy to build innovative solutions for business spends, while also meeting the needs of SMEs and Startups
Co-Founder, BoardsNXT & SHRM Advisor
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Debabrat (Debu) Mishra is a Dubai-based Management Consultant and Board Advisor who helps leaders solve the complex world of work. He has been advising private and government organizations in the Middle East on their Human Capital issues for over two decades.
Chairman, HONO
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Rajesh Padmanabhan, is an accomplished corporate executive, board advisor, master coach & a start-up Entrepreneur. He brings more than 30 years of global diversified business, operating & consulting experience across industries in IT Services, Manufacturing, Hospitality, Mining & Metals, Banking & Infrastructure. He has successful track record of driving digital transformation, building boards, Excos and top teams along with driving effectiveness, running large human resources function globally with experience in corporate banking as business head & driving strategy.
CAREER HISTORY
Rajesh is an influential Senior Business Transformation leader and a matrix global professional who has done seven roles in seven varied industries, to his credit. Started his career handling systems on mainframes he went on to become a corporate banker, run P&L’s, execute Corporate Strategy, do new institutional business of SME ( Small & Medium Enterprises), SAP Functional, Business Consulting & Global HR. He built convergence between Business & People keeping Technology at the forefront. He has been in global roles for over 3 decades and managed diverse cross-cultured teams across North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, SE Asia & APAC.
He is passionate about digital acceleration, leadership development, people & culture change & skills building holistically for business value & excellence creation in his various roles with ICICI Group, Essel Propack as Director Corporate & Global CHRO, The Oberoi Group as EVP, Group HR & OCLD ( Oberoi Centre for Learning & Development), EVP & Global CHRO at I-Gate , Group CVP, Business Consulting & CHRO Capgemini, Group CHRO for Vedanta Resources Plc and Welspun Group as Director & Group CHRO.
He has created customer – centric global business models across geographies with world class capabilities, building organisational excellence & running complex yet efficient structures to create enterprise value.
He is Chairman of the Board for HONO, a AI enabled employee experience platform.
Rajesh is a Double Masters in Human Resource & Finance from the University of Mumbai. He won an UN Award for building world class diversity & inclusive practices at Capgemini. His hobbies include Cricket, Fitness, Motorcycles, Travelling & Research.
Vice President -Talent Acquisition, Mastercard
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A talent acquisition professional with extensive experience in hiring for large organizations, has previously worked for companies such as PepsiCo, Vodafone Shared Services, Wipro. Played a pivotal role in building green field sites globally , a staunch supporter of data-driven decision-making with a focus on diversity.
Currently works as Head of Talent Acquisition South Asia at Mastercard.
Former Vice President HR, MRF
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Mr. Roy Joseph is an HR professional with multi-faceted experience in the HR industry for over 30 years. During his career, he has worked in various parts of the HR function in India and abroad. In the last fifteen years, he has been at a leadership level in different organizations - both MNCs and Indian.
He is currently working as Director ,HONO . He is leading the company’s operations and expansion in South India & responsible for driving technology-led growth of AI enabled HRM Solutions & Services.
His last assignment was as VP-HR & Services at MRF worldwide. He graduated from XLRI Jamshedpur, with specialisation in human resources and Industrial relations. He has specialized in Change Management from Change First in the US and has completed his OD certification from NTL in the US. He is a Job Evaluation expert - Hays methodology. He is a certified assessor from SHL in London. Apart from his functional area, he was responsible for CSR and Communication in most of the organizations he worked in.
He is on the board of Rajagiri Business School in Kerala.
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Jify
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Born in a family of entrepreneurs and freedom fighters, Anisha Dossa Aibara is the CEO of Jify. A Mumbai-based entrepreneur, she leads the product strategy, customer delivery & growth, building, strategic partnerships and funding at the company. She is also a mother, a sports enthusiast, and an adventure-seeker, who comes with a noteworthy background in investment banking. Over the years, she has led business diligence and closed $100M+ investments across B2B/B2C tech and healthcare sectors, to name a few. She has also steered a successful strategy for India’s largest e-tailer to reach $10bn GMV in 5 years, along with delivering $70M savings for a diversified middle east group. Anisha garnered her exceptional business skills while working in some marquee M&A and public market listings for large consumer retail companies.
She enhanced her expertise in the development sector during her employment years, where she fulfilled the responsibility of impact investing & strategic philanthropy at Dasra. There, she worked closely with underprivileged communities and directed funds from international funds (Stone Foundation, ADB, World Bank) to scale social enterprises. This included building innovative financing structures to create a wider impact on individual sanitation and provide a stable social return. Anisha also extended her work experience and expertise in growth investing with Actis Capital and CDC Group (UK), where she managed financial services, fintech and consumer retail sectors in India and SEA. A graduate of London Business School, she first laid the foundation of her career as a management consultant with Bain & Co. There, she advised India’s largest unicorns on growth strategy and worked across private equity (focused on tech) and cost optimization projects. As of today, she aspires for Jify to be the employed workforce’s personal finance app of choice. She sees the company becoming an employee benefit given as best practices similar to medical insurance, in the coming time.
Chief People Officer, Savills India
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A corporate mystic whose footprints have traced his two – decade long professional journey across India from his diverse experience in selling Brooke Bond Lipton Tea in remote villages, setting up the HNI division of the largest insurance company, heading P&L of an IT consulting firm, to driving corporate segment sales for a large MNC bank to heading HR, CSR, and D & I of large MNCs. This unique experience positions him as a futurist with a macro perspective to deliver projects amidst change, challenge, or ambiguity at any scale.
He is known for his signature approach to co-create ‘new synergies’ between people and places in any project through his human-centred value propositions and rearchitecting the workplace culture.
An evangelist, advocate, and active voice in reimagining the future of workplace for almost a decade, he actively shapes the industry mindset in S.E Asia & India.
Currently he works as Chief People Officer of Savills in India.
Vice President
Skillsoft
Ankur is currently working as a Senior Director of Marketing at Skillsoft and has been part of the company for over 16 years. In his current role, he is responsible for managing regional field marketing, demand generation, business development, brand management as well as Marketing COE (Center of Excellence) globally. Prior to Skillsoft, Ankur had worked on marketing and consulting assignments with Fiorano Software, IDC, AMCON and PwC. Ankur is also a fitness and health enthusiast, an active runner from last 5 years and completed 25+ marathons and half marathons across the country.
VP - Enterprise Partnerships South & East, Refyne
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Sudhakar Kamath : A Post graduate in business management with over 24+ years experience across BFSI & Retail. Proven ex uhhpertise in building B2B & B2B2C business. His career highlight was his last stint of 16yrs with HDFC Life as a Zonal Head - Employee Benefits. He also worked with companies like Coats India, ACC Limited, HSBC plc.
Zonal Head North, Refyne
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Niveditha comes with 15 years experience working closely with HR teams and has been with Refyne since its inception. She leads the growth team in the north and has played an instrumental part in its expansion.
COO, Think Talent Services
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As Co-founder & COO, Anjul leads the Product, Technology and Consulting functions at Think Talent. Anjul is a passionate advocate of leveraging digital technologies to help companies build stronger talent pipelines. Over the last decade, he has worked closely with more than 100 companies to support design and implementation of digital talent management solutions spanning assessments, learning, 360 feedback and executive coaching. Prior to his entrepreneurial stint, Anjul has worked in a wide range of HR roles in India, Singapore & Australia. He has a MBA from XLRI and a B.A. in Economics from Delhi University.
Executive Director - Knowledge & Advisory Services
SHRM India, APAC & MENA
At SHRM India, Nishith leads a growing advisory practice focussed on enabling clients realize business goals though better alignment of people practices. He is focused on achieving business growth through effective execution of client consulting mandates for the whole practice in domains such as Vision & Values cascade, Organization Structuring, Performance Management System & other HR process design. In his stint in a corporate role, Nishith has worked with the Bharti group- as a part of the Organization Design and Talent Management team. Here – he worked on projects such as shared service design and implementation, manpower planning, and organization structure design and evaluation. Prior to working with SHRM, Nishith was with the HR consulting teams of PwC, ECS, and Aon Hewitt. Nishith holds a Master’s Degree in Human Resources and Organizational Development (MHROD), presently MBA-HRD, from Dept. of Commerce, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi and is a certified practitioner of BIOSS tools and methodologies for organization design and leadership capability assessment.
Chief Human Resources Officer
Asian Paints
Savitha Shivsankar leads Human Resources globally at Asian Paints Limited.
With a rich portfolio of multi – sectoral experience spanning over two decades, Savitha has been instrumental in shaping and cultivating HR landscape in the country. She started her career with ITC, and went on to work in the Consumer Goods space with Marico, Diageo and Mondelez. She was earlier the Talent Head - Organizational Development and Inclusion at Novartis based out of Singapore. What sets her apart is her astute understanding of the operational nuances of doing business, having also successfully lead business operations in the Consumer Goods industry.
Savitha’s passion lies in driving business growth through people. She truly believes that great culture brings strategy alive. With a bedrock of curiosity, compassion and external focus, Savitha is leading the organization towards building high performing self-directed teams. Her own special route to do that is through ‘Creating Joy’ for everyone who associates with her.
Savitha is a graduate in Microbiology from Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai. She pursued her masters in personnel management and industrial relations from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. In her leisure time, Savitha likes to travel while pursuing her bucket list of offbeat destinations.
VP - India Sales, HackerEarth
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Ankith is passionate about selling. Love solving problems, networking with people, and sharing ideas. Huge fan of Manchester United. He's currently working on helping companies in hiring top software talent based on their competencies and not based on their resumes.
VP – Strategy & Transformation, JobsPikr
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Vivek Bhaskaran heads Strategy & Transformation at JobsPikr, a talent intelligence platform by PromptCloud. He is passionate about using data to drive talent decisions that create business impact. He comes with a diverse experience across various business functions and works closely with HR leaders across the world; which helps bring in a unique perspective.
MD & CEO, HT Media Ltd
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Praveen Someshwar is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at HT Media Group.
Praveen has been with the Group for over two years and has been working towards transforming it into a new-age media group, with digital transformation and innovation being the driving forces.
Prior to joining HT Media Group, Praveen was Senior Vice President and GM with PepsiCo and responsible for all the company’s businesses across North & South East Asia. Preceding that, he was the CEO for the Food business, CEO for PepsiCo’s beverage business in India & South Asia, CFO for PepsiCo’s India & South Asia business, Strategic & Financial Planning Head for Pepsico India & South Asia.
Praveen is a Chartered Accountant and Cost Accountant by qualification and holds a Bachelors degree in Business.
CEO & Founder, AuthBridge
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Ajay Trehan, Founder & CEO, AuthBridge, is a veteran of building and operating successful businesses. His foresight and logical bent of mind have contributed to his success as has his ability to listen to his gut timely. The former enabled his decision to get hands-on corporate experience before he chased his dream to be an entrepreneur while the latter empowered his leap of faith to leave a distinguished corporate career to pursue his passion. Ajay envisioned AuthBridge while working on CORE BPO, his joint venture in business process outsourcing, catering to the global real estate industry. The trust deficit experienced by his global clients in conducting business in India led him to build AuthBridge in 2005. Ajay has led the organization through many phases of innovation and business transformation since. From a pioneer in background screening to India’s largest authentication technology company, AuthBridge’s journey has been Ajay’s journey too. Ajay is passionate about mentoring young entrepreneurs. He is on the Advisory team of several start-ups, lending his guidance in helping them evolve and scale. Actively associated with NASSCOM and TIE, you can find him sharing his thoughts on innovation, process and business transformation, and trust infrastructure – subjects very close to his heart. PS: Yes, he has it – A Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Delhi. Plus, he is a certified ISO 9001 auditor.
Global Head - Learning, Organisation Effectiveness & DNI, WNS Global Services
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Rajnish is the Global Learning, OE & DNI Leader at WNS Global Services. He has two & half decades of work experience with various organizations in IT, ITES, Insurance & NBFC’s across global geos . With WNS for the past 8 years, his previous stint was with L&T General Insurance Company as a Head of HR. Rajnish is a Post Graduate in Personnel Management from University of Pune, India.
General Manager Alliances, Advantage Club
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Competent, Inspirational, and passionate entrepreneur... If anything which has made Varun a dynamic sales expert & strategic leader in constant changing times are these soul elements of his leadership landscape.
Over the years he has achieved both top and bottom line profitability by engaging and delivering technology solutions to customers.
The professional trajectory of his deep rooted career span of 22+ years at diverse leadership roles has played a significant role in growth of companies and startups including Pine Labs, Kwench Global Technologies, Vodafone, HP , Human Dynamics , Airtel and his own start-up Samaritan.
His academic qualifications with extensive management study includes a double MBA degree, one from the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) at the University of Delhi with a skilled specialization in Strategy and Leadership, and a second with a specialization in Hardcore Sales from the Institute of Management Studies (IMS), along with Business Management graduation.
He is currently pursuing PhD in international marketing at IIT Delhi. He likes socializing and networking with individuals outside of work.
Senior Director - South & Advisory Services
SHRM India, APAC & MENA
A passionate and multi-tasking business professional with over a decade of experience, Dedeepya handles the portfolios including Advisory, Research and Academic Partnerships catering to the regions of India, as well as APAC regions. She further also heads the South Region for SHRM India and is responsible for business development and consulting in the area of Human Capital Management. Prior to this, she has worked with Oracle India as HR Consultant. Her areas of interest include Knowledge Management, Diversity and Inclusion, Competency Assessment and Development, Organization Development, Research and HR Analytics. She has been involved in the project design, content generation and implementation of consultancy projects in the above areas. She is experienced in using Quantitative and Qualitative research methods for diagnostic purposes including identifying relevant variables, designing questionnaires and using various statistical methods for analysis. She co-authored papers/ book chapters in the areas of Diversity and Inclusion and further has contributed extensively to various articles / interviews in leading newspapers. Dedeepya is a Mechanical Engineer from Jawaharlal Technological University (Kakinada, A.P) followed by a MBA from Indian Institute of Science (IISc, Bangalore, India). She is a certified SHRM Senior Certified Professional ( SHRM SCP), Level -1 Hogan Assessor and is certified in Job Evaluation by KornFerry - Hay. Along with her work, Dedeepya is passionate about painting, dancing and sports.
Start-up Partner, Talent & Strategy Enabler, Executive Coach, Board Advisor
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Varadarajan or Raja as he is popularly known as, is a MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, Master of Commerce from Madras University, has Professional diplomas in Law and Training & Development. An Executive Coach from Center for Creative Leadership US, a certified Hogan analyst and qualified for Independent Directors.
Has over four decades of experience in various industries in Manufacturing, Telecom, Financial Services, Management consulting, IT Enabled Services and Aviation across India, Middle East, ASEAN & SE Asia, US and UK markets. Worked in Organisations such as McDowell & Co, Sundaram Clayton TVS, Price Waterhouse, KPMG, American Express, Wipro Spectramind, Quatrro and various companies in Tata Group (Tata Cellular, Tata Teleservices and Tata Group HR) with his last assignment with Vistara (Tata-SIA Airlines)
He was part of the start up team of Vistara and was instrumental in setting up the People processes in the organisation linked to the business strategy of Vistara. He played a key role in the setting up of the teams for one of the quickest launch of an airline in India.
Presently runs his own firm helping companies in their journey to expand and grow and is on Advisory Board of a few mid level companies like Talocity, Hono HR and Z&M Foods and assists a few more companies in their transformation such as Authbridge. He is also part of the Corporate Advisory Group at IIM Udaipur and a Mentor for the Executive MS Program at Columbia University US
He has received a great deal of industry wide recognition, during his career – some of them being, awarded the Seasoned HR Professional Award from NHRDN and the Best HR Professional, by the World HR Congress for thought leadership & contribution in the field of HR.
Vice President - HRD, Vestige Marketing Pvt Ltd
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Aseem is a seasoned HR leader having experience in setting up HR systems and processes and driving them in sync with business strategy towards attainment of sustainable competitive advantage for the organization.
Aseem carries rich functional experience in the entire gamut of Strategic Human Resource Management with special focus on creating and sustaining a culture of a Great Place to Work and initiating and driving strategic, value based changes in organizations through HR & OD interventions.
He carries diverse industry experience spanning in Marketing Communication, IT and EPC with companies like DDB Mudra Group, Ahluwalia Contracts (India) Ltd, Uttam Group etc.
Presently Aseem is working as a Vice President-HR with Indian conglomerate Vestige Marketing Pvt. Ltd and heading HR of multiple business verticals viz. Direct Selling, Manufacturing, FMCG, and Retail etc.
Aseem has a keen interest and insight into human psychology and organization behavior. He relishes the facilitation of appreciative; strength based training programs and interventions on a variety of subjects that include Emotional Intelligence, Visualization and Ethics. He has also published a research in the area of Vision, Mission, Values and Transformational Leadership.
In his free times he loves to play badminton and write poems.
Chief People Officer, RenewBuy
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Chairman & Director-Carmine Energy Pte. Singapore, former MD & CEO, ONGC, former CEO (Oil & Gas) -Reliance ADAG Group
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Chairman & Managing Director, Oil India
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Senior VP & Master Facilitator, Great Manager Institute
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Dr. Vishwanath Joshi leads Human Resources at Hexaware as Chief People Officer. Prior to taking up this role, Dr. Joshi was leading the Practice of Journey Programme at Great Place to Work® India, a Culture Recognition and Transformation organization based in Mumbai, India.
VJ (as he is fondly called), is a Post Graduate in Human Resource Management from Pune University and has a Phd in Management and OD from Academy HRD (www.academyofhrd.org). His Phd thesis explored how IT professionals in India experience their career and used a unique approach of Phenomenology to uncover this theme.
During the course of his career spanning more than 20 years, VJ has worked with top global IT consulting organizations and some of biggest and most recognized names in business, in generalist and specialist roles.
His professional career has been a unique combination of corporate roles, consulting, academics and research. In his last role at Great Place to Work Institute, he was involved in designing and delivering organizational culture building and employee engagement interventions for medium to large organizations, across different sectors.
True to his academic pursuits, VJ has published and presented several papers in areas of Innovation, Customer Centricity, Strategic Leadership, Career Management and Creating High Performance Organizations in national and international journals.
On the personal front, VJ enjoys travelling and cooking, apart from spending time with his 15-year old daughter. His wife Aruna is an experienced accountant and a Fellow of Life Insurance Corporation of India.
Head - Leadership Practice
SHRM India
At SHRM India, APAC & MENA, Amogh heads the Executive Leadership practice and Amogh is responsible for the creation and implementation of the Executive Leadership strategy for the region. Extensive experience in providing business-relevant counsel and consulting solutions to top Indian/Global organizations primarily in the areas of leadership strategy, development, succession management, and talent acquisition. Consulted C-Suite level clients from diverse industries including automotive, BFSI, FMCG/CD, IT/ITES, healthcare, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, retail, start-ups, and telecommunications.
A trusted executive coach and a dependable talent development consultant extensively involved in research & publication, implementation of interventions and best practices, and helped clients in implementation of leadership development and talent management initiatives. Frequently quoted in trade and business magazine on talent and leadership development.
Global CSR & Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Leader, Genpact
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At Genpact, Lavanya leads programs focused on building better communities and creating an inclusive, equitable, and diverse culture where everyone can celebrate their authentic selves. As the corporate social responsibility leader, she unites the energy and talent of Genpact employees to drive societal change and environmental sustainability. In her role as the diversity, equity, and inclusion leader, she steers initiatives that create an inclusive organization with a 50% representation of women across all levels. She has more than 18 years of experience across the talent management domain - Hiring, HR, and Learning and development.
Former President HR, JSW Group
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Gautam Chainani is a senior Human Capital Executive with over three decades’ experience in leading the HR function at national & global levels. His industry expertise encompasses a wide range of industries such as IT/Telecom, FMCG, Financial Service and Manufacturing. He is currently pursuing his doctorate program from IIM, focusing on Smart Manufacturing and its implications for Strategic Human Resource Management in influencing change.
Gautam is currently Advisor to Epsilon Carbon Pvt Ltd. He has been working with the Promoter as well as the Senior leadership team in Organizational transformational work to build the business in India as well as establish a global footprint. He is also working with a renewable company in Organization wide transformation
Till recently he was President, HR Strategic Initiatives at the JSW Group, involved in large scale Mergers & Acquisitions of stressed assets, as well as driving HR transformation at the Plant level. In addition, he is involved in post-merger integration work related to the recent acquisition of Bhushan Power and Steel Ltd. (BPSL), a 3.5 mtpa plant in Orissa, and in setting up a technology platform company, JSW One Platform Ltd involved in sales distribution to SME . MSME and IHB customers. He is also involved in the growth and transformation of an unlisted promoter business in Specialty / Advanced Carbons.
Prior to April 2020, Gautam was Group President-HR of JSW Group, a $12 billion conglomerate with presence across India, the USA, South America & Africa. The JSW Group is part of the O.P. Jindal Group with established footprints across diverse sectors like Steel, Energy, Infrastructure, Cement, Ventures and Sports. He was responsible for the entire gamut of Human Resource functions across the JSW Group companies in its Global Operations. He is also on the Board of JSW Retail Company, a subsidiary of JSW Steel Ltd.
Prior to joining JSW Group, Gautam was the Chief Human Resource Officer and Head, Corporate Communications for UltraTech Cement Limited (UTCL), Aditya Birla Group (ABG). He was associated with ABG from 2007 to 2016. At UTCL, he set up the state-of-the-art 100,000 sq ft Technology Training Centre at Aditya Cements. He was involved in the post-merger integration of Jaiprakash Associates cement capacity of 21.2 million tonnes. At UTCL, he also worked closely with the leadership team in the planned organic expansion of the business.
Gautam joined Aditya Birla Group from American Express India Ltd., as Vice President-HR for India and Pakistan. He initially joined AB Group as CHRO for the Financial Services Business where he worked closely with Ajay Srinivasan in building the Financial Services Business across Lending businesses, Pvt Equity (including Real Estate), Insurance Broking, Wealth management in addition to being involved in growing the Insurance Business and the Asset Management Business respectively. He was involved in the acquisition of Apollo Sindhoori, which was in major player in the South in Equity and Commodity broking (Aditya Birla Money).
At American Express, he was involved in the sale of the Amex Banking business (AEB) to Standard Chartered Bank. In addition, he was part of the leadership team that launched the Amex Platinum Card in India.
Gautam completed his Masters in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations from Mumbai University. He started his professional career with DCM Data Products Limited in Delhi and worked in HR Leadership roles in organizations like Hindustan Unilever Ltd, Wipro Consumer Products, Hughes Telecom Limited, WNS Global Services Limited & American Express. He served on the board of American Express (India) Pvt Ltd and with a WNS Global Services subsidiary.
Director – Knowledge and Advisory & Business Head – PSE Business
SHRM India
Ashissh has over 21 years of experience in HR Consulting firms and has been providing strategic HR inputs to more than 300 clients across industries and geographies, including India, the Middle East, the Americas, and Southeast Asia.
Ashissh is a certified DDI Master Facilitator, Gallup Strengths Coach, Hogan Certified, Talent Management, and HR Technology, expert. Before joining SHRM, Ashissh worked extensively with world-class Consulting organizations like Gallup, Mercer, DDI, and Aon.
He is a trusted adviser to C suite leaders on improving business results by helping build leadership capability, people digital systems, craft talent management strategy, training and designing development journeys, and measuring employee engagement.
Ashissh is known for his executive presence, public speaking skills, and passion for facilitating leadership and behavioral training workshops. His other significant work includes evaluating and building organizational structures by linking to business needs and the application of competencies across the organization. He is also a certified Competency Based Interviewer. Ashissh is an engineering graduate and an alumnus of IIM Lucknow.
Chief - HR & Administration, Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Ltd
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Atul is an engineer turned HR Professional. A People Leader with a good blend of Business and HR experience spread over 30 years. This vast experience is a good blend of Strategic Thinking and Result Delivery through Execution Excellence.
During his last 20 + years in HR, he has led HR function for diverse businesses within Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M). These include HR for Automobiles, Trucks & Buses, Tractors, DG Sets, Construction equipment’s and Agri business. During this journey, he has handled Strategic & Transformational HR Management, Organization Design, Change Management, Talent Management, OD, Capability Building, Employee Engagement, HR Shared Services and PMS.
Currently, he is the Chief - HR & Admin for Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Ltd., with more than 25000 employees spread across the country. His role responsibilities also include CSR & sustainability.
He is a Member of the Steering Committee of the Financial Service Sector of the Mahindra group.
Atul has done his BE (Mech) from Pune University and then completed his MMS (Operations) from Mumbai university. He is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) by the International Coach Federation and also have Certification in MBTI.
He loves to coach people and enable them to grow.
Global Hiring Leader, Genpact
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Ritu leads Hiring globally for Genpact.
She is an experienced Human Resource leader with demonstrated history of working successfully in the Information Technology and Services Industry (ITES) for over 2 decades. She has extensive breadth and depth in Executive search, Recruitment, policies, strategic HR partnership, implementing enterprise level HR transformation projects. Proven record of working in a global environment and building strong teams with core focus on providing strategic partnership to stakeholders.
Group COE Head - Talent Acquisition & Management, GMR Group
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Harpreet is the Group COE Head responsible for Talent Acquisition & Management for the GMR Group of companies. Her focus areas include hiring for Top Management roles for across the group and building internal succession pipelines. During her tenure in GMR, she has hired more than 45 CXOs across the Group. In her current role, in addition she is responsible for Employee Engagement, Culture building through Values & Beliefs and is Chairperson of IC, PASH for the GMR Group.
Harpreet is an Honours Graduate in Commerce from Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) 1989 & Masters in Commerce from University of Delhi 1991. She holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (MBA) from Institute of Management Technology (IMT) Ghaziabad, 1995 batch with dual majors in Human Resource Development (HRD) and Finance.
Harpreet has been heading HR during the last 16 years for companies across industry. She has worked and contributed to the growth of companies namely SMS Siemag, a German MNC, ABC Consultants, WWIL, a Zee Network Company, Fortis HealthWorld Ltd., The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), The Princeton Review - Manya and Engineers India Limited (EIL).
Harpreet has more than 26 years of rich and diverse experience in areas of Human Resource Management broadly – Organisation Transformation and Management of Change, Organisation Re-structuring, M&A’s, HR Digitalization, Talent Acquisition & Management, Compensation & Benefits, Performance Management, HR Policies and Guidelines, Organization Development, Learning & Development, Statutory Compliance, Reward & Recognition, Succession & Career Planning, HR Budgets & Audit and Data.
She has been invited as speaker to top academic institutes, committee member in top industry bodies and expert evaluator in industry level competitions including BML Munjal L&D Awards.
Group CHRO, RJ Corp
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Parag Paranjpe is currently Group CHRO at RJ Corp, parent company of Varun Beverages (Largest bottler of Pepsi outside USA), Devyani International, franchisee of Yum Foods (KFC /Pizza Hut), Costa Coffee and Vaango. It also owns Creambell Ice cream brand.
Parag completed his post-graduation in PM & IR from TISS, Mumbai in 1988.Thereafter he has worked with companies such as Cadbury India, Thomas Cook, Bunge, ICICI Venture in HR Leadership Roles. Prior to joining RJ Corp, he was working with Aditya Birla Group, initially as the Group Head for Talent Staffing and Employee Relations and later as CHRO of GRASIM (Pulp and Fibre business).
Founder & CEO, Saarathee
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A passionate leader who believes in driving change and transforming lives. Richa comes with an experience of 2 decades across corporate and social sector. Her experience spans advertising, brand communication, product marketing , channel sales, distribution & fund raising. Richa has worked closely with customer experience and engagement teams; and has created a forte in building teams that have the prowess to craft authentic and contextual conversation to build customer engagement.
Richa was introduced to the concept of sustainability and corporate responsibility while she was working in the social sector (CRY). Thus came about Saarathee – a Customer Contact Centre that would employ and leverage PwD. With this she decided to create an impact story while delivering services which could manifest business strategy into positive outcomes for organizations across sectors. She chose to hire PwD to drive her business and change the canvas of the story for corporate India. And as an onward journey she wants more and more corporates to become Inclusive, therefore she is working towards creating India’s first dedicated EduHire Platform which aims at bridging the employment gap between skilled PwD as well as Corporates.
Director - HR & Communications, Argenbright Holdings
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VP & Chief Human Resources Officer, Sun Life Asia Service Centres
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I am a People’s Leader with over two decades of cross-industry experience in Human Resources. In my sustaining career, I have curated and nurtured collaborative partnerships across multiple businesses and stakeholders.
I am a big believer in the role technology is playing and will play in creating an eco-system for delivering unique digital employee experience/s in the future.
Functionally, over the years, I have led and managed diverse aspects of Human Resources, which includes Leadership Talent Acquisition, HR Policy Guidance, Mergers and Acquisition, Compensation & Benefits, Succession Planning, Talent development and management and more.
Founder & CEO, Hyreo
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Arun Satyan is the founder & CEO of Hyreo, a candidate relationship platform. Arun is a strong believer in technology bridging gaps, creating new opportunities and enabling customers to make informed decisions. Founded Hyreo with the objective of enabling a seamless recruiting experience for all stakeholders by leveraging intelligent technology, data and human behaviour science.
CHRO, Tata Advanced Systems
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Rabeen brings in 25 years of diverse HR experience. He is currently heading the Human Resource Function of TATA Advanced Systems, India's leading private sector company in Defence & Aerospace sector.
Prior to this, Rabeen was Vice President HR at Tata Teleservices, and responsible for HR Business partnering and driving pan company HR operations. Before joining Tata Teleservices, he was Head of Talent Management for Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd catering to an amalgamated workforce from Tata Power & erstwhile Delhi Vidyut Board. Before joining the house of Tatas, Rabeen worked in NTPC Ltd, where he started his journey as a Management Trainee.
In his career, Rabeen has played a pivotal role in steering people transformation projects, HR policies & practices, steering talent management initiatives, transforming organization culture into a value driven, performance oriented, competitive & customer centric workplace. He has led multiple business critical transformation projects including mergers & acquisitions and organisation’s participation in Best Employer Surveys.
An Alumnus of Delhi School of Economics, he has equipped himself with multiple Certifications in various facets of Human Resource. Mentoring is his passion, and he has mentored talent across organisations helping them achieve greater personal & professional heights.
CEO, Whole Time Director, Liberty General Insurance Ltd
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Roopam Asthana is the CEO and the Whole Time Director of Liberty General Insurance Ltd.
He is an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus and is the founding employee of the company and has played a pivotal role in the formation of the joint venture, along with the licensing of the company, from the very beginning. Under his pragmatic leadership, the Company will complete its 10 years of operations in 2023 in India.
With an experience that spans over 25 years, he has worked as the Chief Executive Officer for the SBI Cards and Payment Services Pvt. Ltd. and GE Capital Business Process Management Services Pvt. Ltd.
He has garnered immense experience in the introduction of transformational financial strategies and high-growth consumer financial services, through well thought out and planned progression of practices. He has worked across banking assignments in HSBC India and USA; spanning verticals like Financial Control, Credit Cards, NRI Banking, Strategic Planning, Corporate Banking, as well as Consumer Banking.
With a rich experience, he continues to build and sustain lasting relationships with customers as well as stakeholders, remaining grounded in the values, while at the same time moving forth with innovative strategies and technologies.
Chairman at Capacity Building Commission, Government of India
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Adil Zainulbhai is the Chairman of the Capacity Building Commission of India (CBC), which was set up by the Honorable Prime Minister of India since April 2021. He also served as the Chairman of the Quality Council of India since 2014. He is also the Chairman of Network 18 and TV18 and is currently on the Boards of Reliance Industries Ltd., Larsen & Toubro Ltd., and Cipla.
As Chairman, CBC, he leads the Commission in executing the vision of the Honorable Prime Minister – Mission Karmayogi – to help each Civil servant have the training and tools needed to deliver performance for the citizen of India. CBC is currently working on upgrading the 750 Central Training Institutions, helping each Ministry develop a Capability Building Plan (CBP), and creating an Annual Civil Services report. CBC is working with Railways to train 100,000 citizen facing employees to become more citizen centric, among many interventions to get citizen centricity into government.
As Chairman, QCI, Adil was involved in many initiatives across the government to improve Quality of Goods and Services. Through QCI, he had been involved in measuring Swachh Bharat and worked with over 23 Ministries. He was involved in projects in Infra, Health Care, Education, Coal and others. QCI has grown 10X over the last 5 years
Adil retired as Chairman of McKinsey, India after 34 years at McKinsey, and the last 10 in India.
Recently, Adil co-edited the book, ‘Reimagining India’ which featured 60 authors including prominent businessmen, academics, economists, authors and journalists.
Adil grew up in Bombay and graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology. He also has an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Adil is very active in community and social causes. He is a Board member on the Piramal Swasthya, Piramal Foundation, and Anant National University.
In his spare time, he enjoys sailing in Mumbai harbour.
EVP & Chief People Officer, Infogain
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Rajiv is a young, dynamic and a fast tracker HR and OD thought Leader who believes in “Self” being the “Instrument of Change”. Having worked with Hi-Tech Industry throughout in his career, he has played a key role in the transformational journey of some of these companies (i.e. Infogain, Dassault Systèmes, GlobalLogic and HCL). Rajiv is inspired with “Employee First” concept and finds it to be the key driver towards catering to the expectations of “Customers” and “Shareholders”.
Vice President - People Team & Head of Human Resources, GlobalLogic India
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Rajesh Rai is Vice President – People Team and Head of Human Resources for GlobalLogic in India. Rajesh is responsible for spearheading the company’s HR transformation, Learning & Development, Change Management and D&I & Sustainability initiatives for India.
With over two decades of experience in the HR industry, Rajesh has extensive experience of working with global business & HR teams across multiple cross-cultural border teams effectively. Rajesh will help GlobalLogic build new frontiers that will bolster the company’s vision in building a ‘humans and people first’ culture, drive employee experience, nurture diversity and inclusion, and transform the employees’ and company’s growth journey.
Rajesh has worked with various leading global organizations such as Eicher Motors, Expedia, United Colors of Benetton, Adobe Systems, Ernst & Young, and Arthur Andersen. Rajesh joined GlobalLogic this year and was previously associated with Accenture as Head of HR for their Consulting business in India, along with India Corporate Functions. He enabled HR interventions & strategies for a huge workforce, that focused on crafting industry leading HR practices, commissioning large-scale transformational change and redefining employee experience through Human Capital strategies, Culture, Performance Achievement, Leadership, Diversity and Inclusion.
Rajesh holds a Bachelors and Masters in Chemistry from Delhi University and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur. He is a GALLUP Strengths Coach and loves coaching teams and individuals for leveraging & applying their strengths. Rajesh loves to travel & experience local cultures. He also loves Yoga, meditation, painting, sketching, music, soccer and is an avid reader.
Head - HR, Evalueserve
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Over 23+ years of experience spreading across industries like ITeS, Advertising, Media, KPO, Saswati has been in the business of talent as a passion rather than an occupation. She has won multiple awards in her professional journey, Top 100 HR Minds in India in 2018, Top 101 HR Minds in 2019, Top 101 fabulous HR Leaders in 2020 by the World HRD Congress, She was also awarded the Her-oes award (Women HR Leadership) by ObserveNow and presented by Ms Maneka Gandhi in 2020 and India’s 50 Best HR Leaders 2021 by White Page International in 2021. Have been recognized as Global Women Leaders to look Up To, 2021 by Passion Vista, Lifestyle and Business Publication. Won the Golden Glory Awards for the ‘Most Inspirational HR Leader- 2021” by Brands Impact. Won Asia’s 100 Best HR Leaders 2022 by White Page International.
In her professional journey she has been with leading multinationals like JWT, Evalueserve , Publicis Media Cheil India (Samsung Group) to lead their talent vision. She has been part of leadership team driving organization talent audits at C-suite, cost efficiencies and organization restructuring for productivity and agility. In her previous role in Cheil, as Head of Human Resources, she was focused on driving digital transformation of talent and processes and organization re-structuring to make Cheil future ready. She also leading as an additional portfolio of Legal and CSR in Cheil. he has worked on global projects and rollout and delivered best practices across countries like Chile, China and UK to conceptualize and implement talent practices.
At present she is heading Human Resources Business HR portfolio of Evalueserve as their Head of Human Resources (India). Additionally, she is also leading the CSR mandate of the organization.
Managing Director & CEO, Centum Learning Limited
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With over 30 years of rich experience in driving sustainable business growth and leadership development, Sanjay has worked extensively in education, training, technology and skilling space. He has been actively involved with government and industry bodies for influencing policy changes which are helping re-energize the country’s workforce today and preparing youth for growth opportunities in the domestic and international markets. He has also personally led large scale businesses for leading industries in consumer electronics, retail, telecom services, education, digital/online training and skilling in B2B, B2G and B2C domains.
Sanjay’s active contribution towards Leadership development frameworks, Learning Academy models and strategic customized solutions to grow future leaders are widely acknowledged by several leading multinational brands like Essilor, Tata Capital, Egon Zehnder, Airtel, Panasonic, Indian Oil and so on.
VP Head of Total Rewards and HR Analytics, Airtel
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Vamsi Dasetty is currently with Bharti Airtel Limited as Vice President, Head of Total Rewards and HR Analytics. He is part of the HR leadership team at Airtel and is responsible for driving a transformative Total Rewards and people analytics charter. In his earlier stints, Vamsi has worked across varied sectors such as Internet/e-commerce, Telecom, Oil & Gas and Management Consulting in diverse HR roles including Total Rewards, Business partnering, Analytics and Talent management. Vamsi enjoys problem solving backed with data and creating scalable, high impact organization level interventions.
Co-Founder, FloCareer
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Intrigued by the market's focus on people and human nature and having been on the other side of the table for 20 years for hiring talent, Mohit realized the potential impact Flo can have on the problem of lack of talent assessment tools.
He has successfully delivered multiple business solutions, technical implementations of several products on Ecommerce, Online Platforms, Multi-tiered & SOA based architecture and Core Business Services. Before starting Flocareer, he has worked with IT Product and Services Industry in delivery & leadership roles in companies like Xerox, Infosys and Dell.com
He is Nature Lover - Wildlife Photographer - Yoga Practitioner - Squash Player - Marathon Runner - Gardener
Chief People & Tech Strategy Officer, Xebia
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Executive IT leader with 25+ years of IT expertise in technical and leadership roles in Travel Technology and IT companies.
Extensive experience in IT strategy and advisory, Enterprise architecture, IT planning and Agile adoption processes.
Leadership experience in leading Information Technology function, global service delivery, projects, client support and transition in Travel and large IT/Development outsourcing industry.
Skilled in building partnerships, championing IT growth and innovation to achieve internal synergy, high levels of performance and adoption of new systems and technologies.
Proven ability to craft organizational and technical solutions to meet the needs of the business.
Specializations and Interests:
• IT Strategy & project planning
• Partnership & Innovation
• Global Service Delivery, consulting, testing and implementation.
• Large and Mid-size project Management,
• ROI, P&L and IT budget management,
• Process development re-engineering and change management
Consulting Partner-Inclusion Advisory, Saarathee
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Sandeep Bidani is India’s 1st Specially Abled Senior HR Leader and Inclusion Champion who created the pathbreaking PwD inclusion Programs ASPIRE & BELIEVE. He was the Ex-CHRO and Regional HR leader with American Express, KPMG & IBM India/SA for over 25 yrs & a Management Consultant with KPMG India and Middle East. He has been a Consulting Partner in People & Culture Change & an Executive Coach for multiple corporates as well as for INSEAD Programs in India. He’s also a Mentor for the for AI Startups under the Telangana State AI Mission, T-AIM. In his career, he led markets like India, Middle East, Philippines and the UK in various roles managing over 38000 people across, building deep culture diversity & Inclusion understanding. Sandeep is a leading Keynote speaker on #OperationalisingInclusion #Disruption, #Leadingbyexecution and #Futureofwork for Project Management Institute, SHRM, HR Society Nepal & MDRT Global Conference at Dubai in 2020.
Director HR, OSHE, CSR & Administration, Thyssenkrupp
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Ms. Shillpa brings more than two decades of experience in creating value and driving transformation for people and businesses across diverse industries as an HR Partner. Prior to thyssenkrupp, Ms. Shillpa was associated with some of the organisations like Eaton India, Cummins India, PwC GDC India and Dell International.
Ms. Shillpa has contributed significantly in her career on HR Development, Business Partnering, Resource Management, Workforce Planning, People capability building, Strategic HR Projects and Managing complex matters as the Ethics Investigations Leader for Cummins in India. Ms. Shillpa has participated and contributed towards complex acquisition and divestments across industries, throughout her career.
Ms. Shillpa has majored in Business Administration & International Business from Bangalore University and is also an Alumni of National University of Singapore Executive Education Program in Human Resources, Singapore. Ms. Shillpa is a certified 6S Green Belt and also a certified 6S Sponsor.
Ms Shillpa believes it is important to touch human lives while we make businesses successful. It is people who are at the core of the organisational growth and culture. As a leader, her aim is to help talent look at every opportunity they have in their hands while embracing Innovation and Excellence as the drivers to achieve their dreams.
Chief of HR & IR, Tata Steel
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Experienced Head with a demonstrated history of working in the mining & metals industry. Skilled in Negotiation, HRIT, Executive Coaching, shaping future ready culture, Labor Relations and Management, Design thinking and creating pioneering policies. Strong operations professional with a MHRD focused in Humanities from DRMISSS.
Work towards making pioneering shifts in various. HRM processes and practices to enable realization of Tata Steel’s goals and objectives and recognition of Tata Steel as Best Place to Work (among Top Companies) and Best Company in Manufacturing for Women. Maintain Harmonious relations and develop mature Unions to co-create solutions for long term interest of the organisation and employees.Experience
Chief Growth & Strategy Officer, Jify
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Head - Sales and Strategy, Unstop
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Shivam Bandejia, Sales & Strategy Head at Unstop, is someone who believes in the power of money! Hence, sales, you know! A theatre enthusiast, he has left a mark wherever he has set his foot, be it on the placement committee of IIM Kashipur or at Cinepolis or Unstop! He believes that if wish to generate a lead, you need to hit the right emotional & psychological spot of a human being and the same goes for generating the right talent for your team.
Magician
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Rishi is one of the senior Magician Manipulators of Delhi School of Magic and has been performing Close-up Walk Around Magic for Corporates & Social Gatherings across India & Asia. He has 900+ shows to his credit & has performed across India, Nepal, Thailand, and Mauritius.
He has appeared in the Potters of India Media Edition by TIMES Of India.
Founder & Principal Consultant, Pragati: Partners in Progress
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Dr. Geeta Kumar is a multifaceted professional with over 30 years of experience across cultures and industries. Through her work, she has impacted diverse individuals and collectives in helping them rediscover their power within, manage themselves better to nurture and sustain wholesome relationships. Her eclectic and interconnected interests help to bring in valuable holistic learnings and insights into all her engagements.
The diverse roles across her 3 decades of career enable her to work across different management levels and geographies; with MNCs, Indian companies, PSUs, industry associations, social sector, management schools, entrepreneurs and marginalized communities.
Her work encompasses enabling individuals and organizations to recalibrate their holistic Wellbeing. She is adept at facilitating individuals, teams and organizations to realize their full potentials, thereby helping them with their Well Being and aligning to their Purpose
She also provides Consulting on Leadership, Coaching, Culture alignment, DE&I.
She facilitates through customized interventions on Well-being, self-awareness, personal growth labs, self-leadership, power of the self, leading teams, communication and influencing, personal branding and networking, work life integration, unconscious biases, DE&I sensitization, POSH sensitization.
Dr. Geeta holds dual Masters in International Management and Women & Gender Studies and a Ph.D in Management (area of research- Gender, Technology and Organizations). She is a certified Mental Health First Aider from MHFAI, a trained ‘Process Work Facilitator’; a certified MBTI, FIRO- B practioner; and a student- practioner of Vedanta.
She is an active core member of the NHRDN Mind Matters series that has seen three successful seasons from October 2020 to date. The Mind Matters initiative has put together curated sessions, conversations, workshops and toolkits for enabling individuals and organizations to normalize conversations and plan Mental Health roadmaps.
VP, Coaching & Learning Practice, Think Talent Services
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Saurav is a certified Leadership Coach & Management Consultant with 29 years of experience. He specializes in 'Grooming Leaders for Tomorrow'. His blended-learning model is a huge success with his corporate clients across industries & cultures. He has put his experience and expertise to create S-A-U-R-A-V model of coaching, which he uses extensively and successfully. He integrates elements of humour, NLP and magic into his sessions. He has coached more than 1500 young leaders in MNCs.
Saurav facilitates workshops on Leadership, Grooming Leaders, Team Building, Conflict Management, Influencing, Winning Communication, Planning & Organizing and many more. He has trained more than 16500 participants in more than 60 organisations in various skills and competencies in the last 20 years.
Global Diversity hiring leader & India talent acquisition head, Agilent Technologies
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Jyoti’s professional journey started 16+ years back in the year 2006. She started as a recruitment executive and over the last couple of years, she has had the pleasure of gaining industry-wide experiences across Talent Acquisition and HR domains, working with highly matrixed organizations.
In her current assignment as TA Head India and Global Diversity Hiring Lead for Agilent, she has been working on building stronger organizational capabilities and Talent pipelines keeping quality and business continuity in mind and with a continued focus on DE&I. Prior to this, she was associated with Walmart and Aricent as recruitment leader and have led ‘New Country Penetration’ initiatives by setting up complete new centers in countries like ANZ, Taiwan, Vietnam, China etc to name a few.
On the academic front, she have done my MBA along with Btech Biotechnology and Higher National Diploma in Applied Biology.
Jyoti resides in Delhi with her Husband, who is also a TA leader and their 3 year- old son. She is a big fan of Ted Talks and spends her time reading current HR trends and relaxing with friends
Global CHRO, Praj Industries
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Nidhi’s professional journey started as a Learning & Organization Development professional about 20 years ago. An avid traveller with a passion for people and cultures, her core areas of work are in various facets of Human Resources and includes institutionalization of Leadership Assessments and Development, alignment of Business with people practices, Diversity and Inclusion practices, Organizational Effectiveness practices, Executive Mentoring, Innovation Management and Leadership Development interventions.
Nidhi is currently leading the People Practice at Praj Industries, a global leader in Biotechnology and Engineering space.
Prior to Praj, Nidhi was the Vice President, Organizational Effectiveness at Thermax where her role included the entire gamut of Corporate HR including Talent development and Succession Planning, Compensation and Benefits, HR system, Senior and entry level talent acquisition.
As part of the high potential program at Thermax, Nidhi rotated three roles playing leadership roles in Learning & Development, Business and Corporate HR. In her role as an L&D head, she was won several accolades for nurturing a strong leadership pipeline through sustained learning and development practices and building a culture of learning at workplace.
Prior to Thermax, Nidhi was with Infosys where she was involved with building cultures of innovation, led the organization through change initiatives, extensively worked with the senior leadership to institutionalize long term interventions and developed an award winning leadership platform at Infosys Pune.
Nidhi has won several accolades for her work including the esteemed TISS CLO award for the L&D team of the year in 2015, the Prestigious BML Munjal Awards for excellence in Learning & Development in 2015 , the Thermax Innovation Award for a program on Prevention of Sexual Harassment at workplace, the esteemed Infosys Chairman’s Excellence Award for the work in Building cultures of Innovation at workplace.
She brings with her global perspective and experience, having worked with 3M and PDI in the US and studied in the United States for several years.
Nidhi received her bachelor’s degree in from Lady Sri Ram College, Delhi in the year 2000 and a PhD in Human Resource Development from the University of Minnesota, USA in year 2006.
Head HR - India, ITC Hotels
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Roopesh is a Human Resource strategist with over 20 years of diverse and vast experience in the Indian and global markets. An MBA graduate in Human Resources from Bharthiar university, Roopesh is well known in the industry for his business acumen and work culture. He started his career in an operations role in consulting with TATA Group of companies and then has worked in leadership roles with reputed brands such as Hyatt where he was working as the Area Director and Hilton where he was the India Regional HR Director before experimenting with an entrepreneurial project in North America along with his doctoral studies. Combining an impeccable academic and professional record, in his stint with Hilton Roopesh was recognised to be driving strategies through in best class people practices. He re-entered the corporate space with ITC Ltd- Hotels Division in 2019 and is currently associated with the brand as the Head of HR Strategic Initiatives and Transformation. In his role with ITC, Roopesh is spearheading key HR interventions including the digital transformation, that aims to enhance agility and delivering superior stakeholders’ value at ITC Hotels. Roopesh has also been awarded as one of the most influential HR leaders twice in a row for his contribution in the HR field with innovative HR practices and efficiency frameworks. He is CPHR certified and believes that learning never stops. He keeps himself abreast in the new trends and technologies and is of the opinion that Strategic Transformation will be the biggest key priority for HR in the days to come. Roopesh strongly believes in challenging his limits and is very passionate about building a productive and contemporary workplace with sharper, creative and empathetic culture.
VP & Group Head - Performance & Rewards, JSW Group
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I am a seasoned HR professional with more than a decade of rich and diverse experience of leading leadership compensation programs, international rewards, HR technology, global mobility, performance and rewards for C-suite executives & functional heads for IT, Pharma, Manufacturing sectors. I have assisted businesses in organization design and restructuring, integration of compensation practices in acquisition situations, driving Enterprise HR agenda in Group Businesses, defining and executing an effective Talent Strategy, strengthening Employer Brand, and designing progressive HR policies. Held pivotal roles in the growth of several reputed organizations such as IBM, Cipla, Schindler & JSW and led HR functions in domestic as well as global settings.
Head LD & OD, Xceedance
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Parul Varghese is a result oriented people function professional with ~20 years of experience. She has re-modelled and supported plentiful global Talent & Change Management initiatives. She loves to design innovative interventions to attract, develop, motivate, and retain employees. She’s a Delhi University graduate, with a Diploma from XLRI under her wings. Her passion lies with numbers, culture building, fixing what’s broken and nurturing talent. She thrives on the fact that she has always had a 100% retention in her teams. In her current role, she takes care of Global L&OD and Diversity at Xceedance.
Senior Vice President HR and Administration, Tega Industries
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Bhanu is Global Head of HR and IT as well as Executive Council Member at Tega Industries, which operates in 19 countries. Tega's IPO last year was subscribed record 219 times.
His career spanning over two decades started as a Software Engineer. He has spent more than a decade at JSW, where he worked in various capacities ranging from Talent and OD, M & A, HR Head for Hydro vertical.
Bhanu is a Partner at SVP India ( Social Venture Partners) where he actively mentors and help NGOs scale up. He is a Retired Ultra Marathoner, an avid reader and Father of a Teen Age son.
Lead - L&D, NTPC
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As HR Professional, Kena has over 16 years of experience during which she has dealt with all key employee related portfolios in NTPC, India's leading power giant, in areas of staffing, employee benefits, PMS, IE and IR. She has implemented large-scale HR initiatives like researches, OD & strategic management. Currently, she is a Lead at L&D in NTPC. Kena has moderated celebrity sessions with Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Javed Akhtar, Zeenat Aman, Piyush Mishra, Zeeshan Ayyub, Ashwin Sanghi, S Y Qureshi, Dr. Kumar Vishwas, Smriti Irani, Shubha Mudgal, among many others. She co-curated Asia's 1st Feminist Poetry Festival for She The People in 2020. Some of her mentionable includes FICCI FLO Outstanding Corporate Director, NHRD People Excellence Award, Jombay's 100under40, Top 100 HR on Twitter, 100 Influential Power Women at Work by PeopleMatters, She's Mercedes, TOI Write India Winner, NTPC NOCET Champion, NTPC Merit ET conferred by Minister of Power, UGC-NET scholar and University Topper in HR.
Director - HR, Oracle
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Head - Talent Management & Organization Development, DCB Bank
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More than 20+ years of experience in handling multiple portfolios in HR; like Content Development, Learning & Development, Talent Mgmt. and OD, HR Analytics and HR Business Partnering.
Worked primarily in BFSI Sector with brands like Citi, Fullerton, Edelweiss, Yes Bank, DBS Bank India and currently with DCB Bank.
Currently Heading 3 portfolios with DCB Bank: Talent Management and OD, HR Analytics and HR Business Partnering
Director Talent Management, Learning & OD, Greater India
Schneider Electric
“I believe all of us are on our own journey and many a times this takes us through a different discovery of ourselves and the world around”
As a seasoned HR Leader, Sabih provides strategic HR business partner support to drive HR excellence. Throughout his HR Leadership and management career, he delivered Commendable results for Schneider Electric, Rockwell Automation, Avery Dennison, Denso and others.
In his current capacity Sabih leads Talent Management, OD & Learning for Schneider Electric – Greater India.
Guiding organizations in emerging market through significant growth and transformation for Business turnaround from an HR perspective has been Sabih’ specialty. He has been very actively leading and influencing the Organizations he has worked for driving this convergence and creating the desired Culture. Takes lot of pride for aligning organizations with business strategy and driving synergy to achieve business results. Has been recognized for leadership transformation and coaching young leaders both within his own Organization and outside.
He has been a speaker at various management and academic forums and enjoys sharing knowledge. He is also recognized as a Top Leadership Voice on LinkedIn. Fond of sports, he is an amateur runner and cyclist. He maintains consistency in his intellectual levels by reading. He also enjoys poetry and is versed well enough to recite poems by many Urdu poets.
Sabih also supports children education through a family trust that runs school for poor children and have more than 450 students.
Co-Founder
Salto Dee Fe
Rajan Kalia is the co-founder of Salto Dee Fe. The firm is focused on solving "Complex People Problems" to enhance productivity and engagement. He has been involved with teaching for Harvard Business Press, Stanford Seed, and Caltech Executive Education.
Rajan has built the New World People Leader framework in the past three years. The framework outlines the new mindset and skills needed by leaders in the age of AI. Two hundred leaders around the world have been trained on the mindsets and new skills.
For the past twelve years Rajan has been consulting in the areas of Productivity, Organisation Transformation, Talent Management, Employee Retention, People Decisions, and Leadership Skilling. He serves on advisory boards of the firms guiding them on building, managing and engaging Talent.
SDF has served close to 200 clients in past 12 years serving 20 industry segments across Asia, the US, and Europe.
He carries three decades of corporate and leadership experience involving in-depth work in HR, Large Scale Organisation Transformation, Leadership Development, Organisation Enablement & Talent Management, and Coaching. He is continuously working in the area of intersection of Strategy and HR.
He has experience in a wide range of industries - Manufacturing, Automobiles, Consulting, FMCG & Financial Services and have worked in 2 startups - FMCG & Financial Services. He specializes in creating value for the two critical stakeholders of the organization - Shareholders and Employees. He specialises in Business HR, Large Scale Organisation Transformation, Organisation Enablement, Leadership Development & Talent Management (including Acquisition & Retention).
SVP & Chief Talent Officer
Reliance Retail
Jeeva Balakrishnan is a Human Resources & talent development Leader, Executive Coach, experience designer, and change agent. Currently, he leads Talent Transformation at Reliance Retail Limited as its SVP & Chief Talent Officer.
Jeeva has over two and half decades of HR experience in varied functional domains in the Manufacturing, Retail, Consulting and Service Industries. Prior to his current role, he was leading the HR function for Reliance Digital, Reliance Market, Raymond Lifestyle Business, BAA, WethicA and Leela Group.
Jeeva has done his MHRM from Madurai Institute of Social Sciences and a certification in Strategic HRM from IIM-Ahmedabad. He is a certified Executive Coach from Coaching Foundation India (CFI). Currently, he is pursuing his PhD program with IIM Trichy.
‘Helping people succeed’ is his mantra of life. Passionate about redesigning the experience in work and life.
Sr. Vice President & Group Head-HR, Tenon Group
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Amrita Pandey is a people-oriented HR leader committed to driving organisational and talent strategies at Tenon Group. Her demonstrated experience in implementing innovative HR initiatives helps the company institutionalise a strong performance-driven culture.
A seasoned HR professional with 16+ years of experience, she has worked across all HR facets such as Organization Development, Change Management, Talent Engagement, Performance Management, Total Rewards (Compensation & Benefits including Benchmarking) Talent Acquisition, SAP HR & Automation, HR Governance Management, JV Integrations, Audits & Compliances & HR Shared Services.
In her current role as the Group Head-HR for the Tenon Group comprising of Tenon FM, Peregrine Security, and Soteria; Amrita’s primary responsibilities include building high-performing teams, talent acquisition, and retention, continuously working on improving employee engagement and productivity to support company goals and objectives.
She is leading the Executive HR Team of 25+ professionals across PAN-India. Amrita brings to Tenon her passion for enabling people to thrive and perform to their true potential. Amrita holds a business degree from Birla Institute of Management & Technology (BIMTECH). Before joining Tenon, she worked with organisations such as Wipro, Naukri.com, Yatra.com, NIIT, and ICICI Prudential.
Cross-industry and multi-cultural experience makes her one of the most valuable members of Tenon Group. Owing to some of her successful HR transformation initiatives, Amrita has been recognised as HR Leader 100under100 by Jombay. Apart from her professional excellence, she is also a budding artist with a special interest in Acrylic Painting.
Director - Region Head North & East, PMQ & Virtual Education
SHRM India
Director of Marketing, Rangam
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I am the Director of Marketing at Rangam in India. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (#DEIB) in the workplace is my area of passion and expertise. I have had the privilege to interact with and learn from some of the most prominent thought leaders in this space in India, US, and the UK. I have also directly supported Rangam’s SourceAbled program which helps businesses source, hire, and retain talent with disabilities, autism, and other forms of neurodivergence. I am a very strong advocate and a firm believer of allyship in workplace inclusion. I bring more than 16 years’ experience across many industries in management roles that helped me understand the importance of empathy and diversity in the workplace.
Co-Founder & CEO, The Talent Enterprise
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As Co-Founder and CEO at The Talent Enterprise, David Jones heads up business growth and expansion efforts across global markets, and is instrumental in leading key client relationships across the organisation. He is also the driving force behind the company’s research and innovation efforts to identify future human capital priorities.
With over 34 years of human capital experience, of which 26 years are within the Middle East, he has worked with clients in over 40 countries on a broad range of talent, leadership, assessment, performance, transformation, innovation and inclusion projects. He is experienced in using a wide variety of psychometric instruments.
Jones holds an undergraduate degree from the University of York, Post-Graduate Degree from University of West England, Executive MBA from University of Bradford and PhD from University of Leicester. He also participated in a leadership programme in London Business School and is qualified with the British Psychological Society at both Level A and Level B.
With a background in labour market economics, Jones is a senior advisor to policy makers and organisational leaders on their most pressing human capital priorities. He regularly lectures at universities across the globe, including the University of Cambridge – UK, the European School of Management and Technology – Berlin, and the University of Bradford – UK.
Jones recently published his latest book, "The Future of Assessments" adding to his collection of books that include the best-selling ‘Unlocking the Paradox of Plenty’ and award-winning ‘Game Changers’. He has also contributed to books such as ‘Employment and Career Motivation in the Gulf States’ by Gerlach, ‘The Political Economy of Wasta’ by Springer and ‘Policy Making in the GCC’ by IB Tauris. Forthcoming publications include research contributions to volumes on the changing social contract in Saudi Arabia; an international perspective on happiness and positive psychology; and an edited volume on ‘The Future of Labour Market Reform in the GCC’ by Gerlach Press.
Jones is a self-confessed bike fanatic and thinks any car is "essentially a tin box with a wheel in each corner". He is proud to say that he has never owned a car, although he currently owns a total of seven bicycles and 13 motorbikes.
Director - Senior HR Business Partner, Natwest Group
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Reeti Dubey is a seasoned HR professional with almost two decades of diverse functional and industry experience. She has been recognised as a 40under40 HR Leader by The Economic Times and BW Businessworld. Reeti is currently working as Director – Senior HR Business Partner for Natwest Group India’s Operation units which includes Retail Banking, Commercial Banking, Markets and Shared Operations. In her previous role she led the future ways of working, change and restructuring for Natwest Group, India. She has done a variety of roles within the HR Function including 3 years as Diversity Officer for Natwest Group, India. She has been instrumental in implementing many path-breaking initiatives in the inclusion space like - same-sex partner medical benefit a lot before the section 377 was decriminalized; LGBT+ friendly policies; development for PWD; “Sambhav” – a networking platform for PWD in partnership with CII and Women in Tech forum. Coming from a technology background herself, she is passionate about leveraging tech & data to create a better, sustainable and a simple world of work. An avid reader, a full-time mother and a life-long learner, Reeti’s motto in life is to make it worth it’s while by leaving a strong legacy behind!
Associate Director Advisory - India & Sri Lanka
SHRM
Saurabh is an Entrepreneur & HR/Strategy Advisor with over 15 years of learning and experience across the People & Org consulting space. Saurabh brings in deep expertise within the Talent Management solutions landscape having worked on projects across sectors like Oil & Gas, Metal and Mining, BFSI, PSUs, IT/ITeS, Auto, FMCG, Ecommerce, EdTech & Startup.
During his entrepreneurial stint, he founded Realytics, a predictive analytics startup for employee engagement & progression inspired on Mihaly’s Flow Dynamics. He has also been advising startups within consulting and edtech space on talent & HR practices, Product market fit & Growth strategy.
Prior to joining SHRM, Saurabh has worked with organizations like Thomas Assessment, MaFoi Management, Pearson, GPTW, KPMG and EY across roles spanning across Business development and Project management , before starting his own gig as an independent Advisory partner.
Specialties: Cognitive and Behavioural Assessment Consulting, Assessment/Development Centre, Employee Engagement, Culture Study, Talent Analytics, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching, Startup Consulting, Growth Strategies.
Founder & CEO, Intervue
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An end to end platform for tech evaluation and on-demand tech interviews with more than 400+ brands on board.
Rahul has over 9 years of engineering experience leading several teams and hiring 200+ engineers.
He has designed the right processes by working with recruitment teams of all sizes for tech hiring and taken more than 2000+ tech interviews.
Business Head, Batik
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Ashish is currently the business head of Batik, responsible for ensuring revenue, and user growth for the business. An ex-entreprenuer, Ashish has run marketing for some of the most well known brands in India like CNBC-TV18, Star Sports, Indian Super League, FoodFood to name a few. He’s also helped scale up & establish the revenue function of multiple businesses ranging from tech to marketing agencies. A post graduate from MICA, he has over 16+ years of experience and is now focused on making Batik one of India’s (and subsequently the world’s) best businesses.
Managing Director & Country Head, Sense
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Sanjay Dharmani is Managing Director and Country Head (India) of Sense, an AI-driven talent engagement and automation platform that helps global enterprises accomplish fast, personalized hiring at scale. He is a seasoned industry leader with over 22 years of experience in building world-class technology businesses across APAC and NAMER markets.
At Sense, Sanjay leads the APAC business, platform innovation and key KPIs, enabling the company's strategic growth and international expansion. He is passionate about building high-performance teams that are driven by a customer-first culture and capabilities that best serve the organization's people, customers and partners.
Head - HR, India, Fidelity International
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Upasna has 22 years of rich HR experience across leading organizations like Fidelity, Sapient, and Evalueserve, where she has held a variety of leadership positions. She is currently the Head of HR in India for Fidelity International.
She has worked deeply on strengthening the linkage between business and HR strategy in ever-evolving multidimensional work ecosystems. At present, she has been focusing extensively on creating human-centric people strategies that align with - the future of work, generational shifts within society and workplaces, and evolving imperatives for leadership development. She is passionate about the topic of D&I and has worked widely on building cultures that not only value DEI but actively nurture it.
She is a certified coach from International Coach Federation.
She strongly believes in the value of continuous learning and working with diverse teams to evolve perspectives in the fast-changing volatile world.
Senior Content Manager & Head Member Engagement
SHRM India
Credible talent champion who brings together the best of service orientation and tech enablement, for the betterment of the HR profession. Currently into Human Resources Training, Research and Strategic Advisory at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Previously part of National HRD Network (NHRDN) and prior to that, with the Healthcare Industry – worked with Fortis Healthcare and Columbia Asia; moved from Training & Development, into Core HR / HR Operations and took on the mantle of Unit Head HR. Prior experience across a variety of industries including IT / ITeS, Banking, Hospitality and Telecom, at PAN India locations, across over two decades in roles including front-line customer service, training delivery and on-the-job coaching. Passionate about ethical practices, positive workspaces and equal opportunity for all. Learner for life with a flair for all things artistic.
Partner - Leader, Human Capital Consulting, Deloitte
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Gaurav Lahiri is a Partner with Deloitte Consulting. He leads the Human Capital Service area based out of Delhi. He brings significant experience in consulting, focusing primarily on organization transformation, leadership development and M&A.
Gaurav works with clients to align their organizations with their strategic agenda – this includes reviewing strategies, designing organization structures, implementing talent management programs and formulating reward strategies to drive performance and motivation.
While Gaurav’s expertise is in Organization Effectiveness, he has also helped clients research and develop competency models for outstanding performance. He managed a seminal Indian CEO research study sponsored by Bharat Petroleum under the aegis of India’s Public Enterprises Selection Board and co-authored the book “The Indian CEO : a Portrait of Excellence” published in 2007.
Gaurav has authored several papers on Post Merger Integration, Change Management and has won several prizes and awards, including the McKinsey Best Management Paper of the year.
Director-Human Resources
GAIL
Mr. Ayush Gupta is a 1992 batch Electrical Engineer from IIT Roorkee and MBA in Operations Management. He has over 30 years of varied and rich experience in the field of Training and Human Resource Development, Talent Acquisition, Leadership Development, Performance Management, HRD Initiatives, Project Management, Operations and Maintenance.
He started his career with Insilco Ltd. as a GET prior to joining GAIL (India) Limited. Shri Gupta joined GAIL in the year 1998 as Dy. Manager (Electrical) at Agra and Firozabad City Gas Distribution Project. There he was involved in implementation of the city gas distribution network in Taj trapezium zone and led several initiatives for bringing down the stock loss in the region. A series of new programmes and L&D interventions including the successful Mentoring Program, Individual Development Programme (IDP) for Senior Executives and remodeling of ET Orientation Programme were launched during his tenure at GAIL Training Institute, Naida. He has successfully led the improvements in various HRD system, process and practices including the digital initiatives for better engagement and enhancement of employee experience. He has been instrumental in formulating talent acquisition strategies to build a strong human resource pipeline for the organization. He is currently also on the Board of Directors of GAIL Gas Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of GAIL.
He is recipient of the prestigious Chevening Rolls Royce Science, Innovation, Policy and Leadership fellowship from UK Government in 2013, Winner of the National Corrosion Awareness Award 2004 and Emerging HRD Thinkers Award in 2011. He is also the co-editor of the book titled 'Natural Gas Markets in India' published by Springer International and has to his credit several best papers awards for papers published and presented at national and international forums.
Executive Director, HR & Admin, CESC Ltd
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Gautam Ray, 61, graduated in Electrical Engineering from Calcutta University in 1981 and completed Post Graduation in Electrical Power System in 1983. Presently, he is Executive Director of CESC Limited, age-old power utility serving the city of Kolkata for more than 100 years. He is also President (HR), Power Group of RPSG. Mr. Ray has an experience of 37 years of working in Power System operations and load dispatch, before he migrated to HR & Admn. He is responsible for HR and Administration for CESC, along with the entire HR process for the new initiatives under CESC, which includes, new power projects and new distribution businesses, training initiatives, etc.
He was instrumental in working on a collaborative project with Singapore Power for improvement in Distribution Sector. He also established AIPM (Asia Institute of Power Management) under CESC, which imparted training and consultancy services for many power utilities of India and neighboring countries.
He is the recipient of Energy Administrator of the Year Award from Association of Energy Engineers, USA : India, Kolkata Chapter. He has received Top Gear Award for excellence in performance and Outstanding Achiever’s Award at RPSG Group level.
He is the Chairman of National Safety Council - West Bengal Chapter, Former President - Calcutta Management Association for 2015-16 and 2016-17, Senior Vice President & Managing Committee Member - Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Chairman - (HR & IR Committee) - CII (ER), Member of National HR & IR Committee – CII. Presently he is serving as Vice Chairman of IIEST Alumni Cell and Co-Chairman of Energy Committee of Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
Enterprise Sales, Deel
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" Pree is part of the GTM team at Deel and is responsible for growth in India. In her current role, she helps organizations in India with their global expansion strategies. Pree is a strong advocate of remote work and believes that individuals across the globe should have the opportunity to work for any organization that they want. Talent is everywhere and being born in a certain country should not stop someone from landing their dream job. She has been instrumental in building the client base in India and tapping into the humongous potential in the subcontinent.
Pree is passionate about people and building new relationships and this has allowed her to excel in her sales career. Before joining Deel, she has worked with organizations like Freshworks, Ally and Microsoft. Sincerity and dedication to her craft has been a constant throughout her career.
Outside of work, Pree is a professional dancer and is passionate about opening her own dance school.
Director, Remote
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Iris Lee is the Director of APAC Growth where she leads demand generation and brand awareness initiatives across the APAC market at Remote. With her previous leadership experiences in Diversity and Inclusion , she is passionate about her mission to help people understand diverse work models and environments throughout her career life. Being a remote worker for over 10 years with her various leadership positions in large enterprise IT companies, she strongly believes in the high value of work flexibility in hiring and retaining top talents without borders.
Prior to joining Remote, she was Head of APAC Partners and Alliance Marketing ,Marketing Director for GEMs (Asian Growth and Emerging Markets) at Red Hat. During her tenure at Red Hat, she was selected by ALEP (APAC Leadership Extension Program) to conduct her project related to diversity and inclusion project for Women in communities and future women in IT.
As part of the leadership program, she was also listed as the most respectful women’s leadership panel in 2018. She brings 20+ years of marketing and business development experiences in leading global IT firms, including Red Hat, Amazon Web Services, Samsung Electronics, and Sun Microsystems. Her specialty also includes building and scaling international distributed teams with diverse background and marketing talent development as well as hands-on coaching and mentoring. She graduated from University of California, Irvine with Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology, Cognitive Science.
Sr Knowledge Advisor
SHRM
Sadaf is a HR practitioner with over 14 years of proven leadership experience in HR Modeling, HR and Business Transformation, Organization Design and Change, System and Technology-based enablement, Talent Engagement and Leadership Development.
She has worked for various organizations in multicultural role and diversity in Tata Group and KPMG Global Services and now associated with SHRM India as Senior Knowledge Advisor. She is a certified TBEM Assessor by Tata Quality Management Services, qualified HR Excellence Assessor of Confederation of Indian Industry and has been part of the assessment team for organizations like SAIL, L&T Hydrocarbons, AM/NS, and Reliance Insurance. She has been recognized as a Job Evaluation specialist by Korn Ferry Management Consulting Firm, USA and has won Best Young HR Award by Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Sadaf is certified Assessment / Development Center specialist from Aon, has received DISC certification from Strenghsscape and works actively in the field of talent assessment and development center. She has collaborated with flagship institutions like XLRI, Aon and Cerberus to design engagement models , assess employee engagement through scientific techniques and build engagement culture in organizations.
She frequently interacts with B School students and has been part of multiple panel discussions in the area of Strategic HRM and Agile HR.
Chief of Performance & Culture, ZingHR
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Associate Director, Knowledge & Advisory
SHRM India
Nitya is an Organization development consultant with experience in Leadership Development, Behavioural Assessments for Succession planning, Performance Management and designing learning journeys for managerial development.
Over the last decade she has successfully leveraged her experience in Business and Consulting to drive meaningful and measurable change management initiatives for her clients across industries like BFSI, ITES, Fintech, Pharma & Manufacturing.
She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in executive HR from XLRI and is a certified HOGAN practitioner. She has extensively used Predictive Psychometric tools like CHALLY, Personality assessment DISC, Pearson personality tool Sosie, Critical thinking Assessments Watson Glaser etc. for designing talent management solutions for clients.
Prior to Organizational Development, her corporate journey began in Business with the Citigroup and later in Wealth Advisory for Private and Corporate clients at Deutsche bank.
Interactive drum Circles & African fusion drum shows
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Drum events India is the brainchild of Dr.ShamRock a gifted percussionist,Sound healer and international drum circle facilitator. .He's accompanied by drummers from Ghana & India.. they pioneers in drum Circle and innovative rhythm based shows and performed 3000 odd shows in India and abroad including IPL, ITL,Indo African summit, TedX, Sunburn etc and celebrities like George bush, Obama and queen Elizabeth been their audience.
President - Global HR, Lupin
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Yashwant Mahadik (Yash) a seasoned global HR professional with over 30 years of experience in top-notch multinational corporations. Has established a track record of success in all his roles and assignments. His experience is diverse and varies across industries/sectors (Technology, Consumer and Healthcare) and geographies (India, UK, Japan, USA, ASEAN and Europe).
His strengths and areas of expertise include; Strategy (Business, Workforce and HR functional), HR and Business Transformation, Leadership Development, Organization and Culture building, Capability Building, Workforce Design & Planning, Talent Management and Succession Planning, Merger/Acquisition Integration and Executive Coaching. He has led/is leading global transformation programs and initiatives in J&J, Philips, SunPharma and Lupin at enterprise level. He is proficient and enthusiastic about evolving social and digital technologies and has a strong presence on social media platforms such as Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, etc and has a blog of his own (www.yashmahadik.com). He is recognized amongst top 50 most powerful HR professionals coming from India and is a leading HR thought leader who has worked in association with leading academicians in USA for conceptualizing and executing global strategic initiatives in areas of Human Resource Management.
Has a very high social (development sector) orientation - believes in sharing his earnings and time with social developmental causes related to education for the underprivileged. Is an avid golfer and enjoys travelling and reading. He is a very keen photographer and is a creator of many professional level, highly creative images using digital photography equipment and technologies. He is incubating his new and personal venture "Yash Mahadik Photography" in dedication of a noble wildlife conservation cause.
Chief People & Culture Officer, CoreStack
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In January 2023, Raj pursued an exciting opportunity with CoreStack Inc., an Enterprise SaaS Company in Cloud Services Management and Governance, based in Bellevue, WA. He is part of their Executive Team and leads their people function globally and has been tasked to support growth and scaling of this deep technology company.
Between early 2018 and Jan ‘23, Raj was IndiGo’s Senior Vice President & Head of HR. Prior to that, he had worked at Amazon for over seven years and was lastly their Head of Human Resources (Asia Pacific & Middle East). Raj’s earlier stints were with GE for over ten years across various business and geographies and several senior HR leadership positions at Hindustan Unilever, Ford Motor Company, and HSBC.
Raj serves as an Independent Non-Executive Director on the Board of HealthCare Global Enterprises Ltd (HCG), India’s largest provider of Oncology care and at the forefront of the battle against cancer.
He has a Master’s in Personnel Management & Industrial Relations from Madras School of Social Work, India and is a Global Fellow of The Wharton School in Talent Management.
Vice President, SAP SuccessFactors India
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A Seasoned Senior Management Sales and Business Leader with more than 25 years of Management & Sales leadership , Strategy & Business Development, Alliances & Channels experience in creating and growing sustainable new businesses in emerging markets in Asia Pacific with particular focus on India. Combines a rich blend of entrepreneurial flair and experience with the process driven execution focus of large global corporations to establish, build and sustain profitable businesses.
Active as an outstanding spokesperson and brand ambassador to establish thought leadership and market presence for leading brands.
Strengths lie in creating strategies and executing them for organisations to capitalise on core Enterprise IT platforms and the emerging trends of Mobility, Analytics and the Cloud to mitigate contemporary business challenges in Human Capital Management using Technology and IT frameworks, platforms & tools for process excellence, particularly enabling organisations in India and emerging markets of Asia to be more successful. Also very experienced with the Partner Ecosystem in Asia and in blending Direct & Indirect Sales Channels to maximum Sales leverage and success.
To make a difference with every pursuit, a positive change to business and society, with a passion to make start up initiatives successful, to build and create high performance teams
Specialties: Entry strategies for product lines or new businesses in Emerging markets. A business savvy general management & sales leader for incubating new concepts, building brands & in creating sustainable and profitable businesses in the high growth and exciting markets of Asia Pacific region.
Partner, Egon Zehnder
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Pallavi Kathuria is the Managing Partner of Egon Zehnder’s India offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore and is active in the firm’s global Technology & Communications Practice. She is a trusted advisor on leadership succession and talent management for clients in the IT products and services, software, consumer Internet, and digital sectors. She is also active in the firm’s Executive Assessment and Development Practice and co-leads the Diversity and Inclusion Practice in India.
Prior to joining Egon Zehnder, Pallavi worked at Microsoft in the U.S. and India for 15 years. Previously, she was a Product Manager at Nokia in Finland.
Pallavi has a Bachelor of Engineering in electronics and communications from the Delhi Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, where she was a Fuqua scholar. Pallavi works to address inequality in India through volunteer work and diversity initiatives.
VP & Head - HR. Target
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Ann Florell is vice-president and Head of HR for Bengaluru-based Target India, an extension of the U.S. retailer Target’s headquarters operations. Prior to this, she supported the CIO and led the HR team for Target Tech.
Ann is a Target veteran who joined the company in 1993 as an Executive Team Lead – HR, for Stores. In 1995, she moved to Headquarters and worked across various HR business partner roles and advanced into leadership. In 2014, Ann was promoted as VP HR. She has since led the Talent Management team and supported multiple C-suite leaders at Target, including the CIO, CHRO, CLO, CFO and CMO.
Ann received a bachelor’s degree in communications and business from Saint Cloud State University. In her spare time, she loves to spend time with her family. She enjoys indoor and outdoor activities including reading, cooking, gardening, doing DIY projects, hiking and spending time on the lake.
Chief People Officer, Flipkart
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Krishna Raghavan is the Chief People Officer at Flipkart. He and his team are responsible for designing and driving initiatives to attract and retain world-class talent, build competencies for the workforce while also strengthening Flipkart’s culture.
Krishna took over the role at a crucial juncture for Flipkart - to shape the organizations' people charter for the long-term. He laid out Flipkart's commitment to being inclusive, entrepreneurial & sustainable while focusing on employee experience.
Amidst a raging pandemic that hit the globe almost as soon as he took over, Krishna was faced with the unprecedented challenge of balancing a keen focus on the well being of employees while also ensuring that the country's wheels of commerce continue to stay in motion.
His leadership in steering the company through this time has been nothing short of exemplary and has earned him the respect of leaders across the organization as well as the larger HR community.
Prior to his current role, Krishna has been the Technology Head for Flipkart’s Fulfilment and Services, and Customer Experience Groups. In the course of his tenure at Flipkart, he has also spearheaded the launch of the marketplace platform and has led multiple strategic technology initiatives for Ekart. Aside from his strong technical expertise, he is also known to be a people’s leader. A leader who brings with him the right blend of technical and people skills, he has built exemplary engineering teams from scratch with his intuitive people management and sound organisational planning.
With a career spanning over two decades, Krishna is adept at managing cross-functional teams. He has worked across diverse geographies and work cultures and is known to be an active champion of driving a people-first culture in organisations.
CHRO, Sony Pictures Networks India
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“To believe in heroic makes heroes” Benjamin Disraeli - Driven by the purpose to strive for excellence, Manu focuses on nurturing ecosystems wherein individuals challenge their own, as well their team’s limits, to drive the growth of the organization and the universe around them.
With a career spanning over two plus decades, across multiple industries and countries, Manu has steered workplace & people agenda of globally dynamic organizations likes Sony Pictures, Coca- Cola, American Express & GE, specializing in roles like Head HR, Talent & Development, Mergers & Acquisitions, HR Transformation, Change & Digital Innovation. She has also operated in board positions wherein, she was/is entrusted to safeguard the company's interest as it pertains to license to operate and sustain in the marketplace. Manu is a graduate of the GE Human Resources Leadership Program (#HRLP) and started her career as a Finance Analyst with Tata Unisys.
Apart from corporate endeavors, Manu is an active industry activist and member of various forums like Co-Chairperson of the CII Western Region Leadership & HR Committee, Member of CII – National Leadership & HR Committee, Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) – Asia Pacific Advisory Board, LNOD Advisory Council, Chandigarh University Corporate Advisory Board, Jombay Board of Directors and AIMA YLC. She is also an active participant in various country growth efforts, such as #Startup India and a regular speaker at industry forums, wherein she passionately delivers insights on Leadership and HR Transformation, Change Management and Human Capital Index, amongst other key topics.
Manu is a qualified MBTI, Six Sigma professional, Instruction Designer & Facilitator on variety of leadership & professional skills subjects. She has acquired her bachelor's in Finance, Statistics & Economics and master’s in human resources from Symbiosis Center of Management & HRD, India.
#GlobalHR #ChangeAgent #HRTransformation #StartupInvestor #BoardMember #TalentManagement #M&A #CultureTransformation
Author, Angel Investor, Arkam, Fundamentum, & CHRO Bigbasket
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Hari is an engineer/MBA from IIT Madras and IIM Calcutta.
He wears different hats: Author, Angel Investor, Advisor to Founders/VCs, Mentor at Start-up Accelerators, Columnist, and CHRO Bigbasket, among others.
Hari spent the last 20 odd years as part of leadership teams of high growth startups and each of these startups saw successful exits. At each of these startups, Hari has been a part of the Management Team and played a key role in shaping their growth and exit.
In the last 6 years, he has played an active role in shaping the startup ecosystem in the country and is respected as a thought leader and an influencer.
He has been a prolific author and has authored 7 books on different themes, and each of these books has been a category leader.
CHRO, Lead School
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With over 25 years of industry experience under his belt, Rohit has been the leading the HR function for various organizations. In his last role he was the CHRO for Paytm since December 2019 where he led the strategic HR agenda for the company.
Prior to this role, Rohit was with Accenture where he was responsible for Accenture’s talent strategy and HR service delivery & operations across all businesses in India..
Rohit has previously also worked with Microsoft, where he served as head of Human Resources for Microsoft India. Prior to this, Rohit spent 11 years at GE in various HR leadership roles across multiple businesses like Energy, Capital, Engineering, Corporate and Aviation both in India and the United States. He has also worked with Eicher Tractors, Cadence Design Systems and Bausch & Lomb.
Rohit is a graduate of SRCC Delhi. He has subsequently also done his MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur. He is married to Swati, who is also an MBA from XLRI and is currently working with SHRM in India. They have 2 children, Dhruv (who is an undergraduate in CS from UCLA, working with Amazon in NY) and Kanhav (who is an undergraduate from Swarthmore in Mathematical Statistics & Economics) and is working with Charles River Associates in Washington DC.
Founder, StoryWorks
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Indranil Chakraborty (IC) is the Founder of StoryWorks and author of the National Bestseller Stories At Work.
IC has combined three qualities to pioneer business storytelling in India: two decades of experience in leading teams and driving change at top firms like Unilever, Tata Group and Mahindra & Mahindra; a love for stories; and the entrepreneurial bug.
His firm, StoryWorks, helps organisations and leaders harness the natural power of stories to dramatically increase the impact of their communication. StoryWorks has done extensive work to help organisations to get their vision, value, strategy and change communication stick with their employees. Other powerful uses that StoryWorks puts business storytelling to are in diverse areas like building the employer brand, knowledge management and behaviour change. Over the last six year they have also trained over 2000 very senior leaders across the world and helped them become powerful business storytellers.
Founder & CEO - Eikam
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Eika Chaturvedi Banerjee is one of India's leading Women Business Leaders and has, inpursuing her purpose, founded 'Eikam Resonance' - an organisation, where she, along withher community of researchers and facilitators, delve into ancient wisdom to solvecontemporary issues. Among other initiatives, Eikam also blends modern ‐day managementpractices, leadership frameworks & corporate strategic directioning with perspectivesimbibed from time- tested ancient wisdom, history, mythology and literature.
A Chevening Gurukul Fellow for Leadership & Excellence from University of Oxford, Eika isalso, by training and passion, among the leading Corporate Mythologists in India, best-sellingauthor of 52 Red Pills, and a sought-after speaker on matters of organizational & personaltransformation, meaning & engagement, diversity & inclusion.
Eika's business experience over two decades spans Private Banking, General Managementand Entrepreneurship. Post her MBA, she started her professional life as a Banker with over12 years of core operating experience in various Business Leadership roles with StandardChartered Bank, ABN Amro (now RBS), Citibank & Kotak Mahindra. She then gainedentrepreneurial skills operating her Wealth Consultancy 'Finsutra', both in India & Singapore.In her last corporate role, for over 6 years, Eika has been the CEO of Future Sharp Skills Ltd(a Public-Private Partnership between Future Group & National Skills DevelopmentCorporation) - India's leading Skills, Talent and Leadership Development organisations. From2020, she serves as an Independent Director on the Board of the same Company.
Eika's living is deeply immersed in her age-old Indian wisdom, and she regularly draws uponher Indian blood memory for her unique pedagogy. She is the founder-curator for Aakhyaansince 2014, India's first ever Annual Mythology festival, a knowledge platform that she hasconceptualised with the Department of Sanskrit, University of Mumbai - integrating thecorporate world, academia, and popular culture. Over the last few years, she has also built a"phygital" knowledge sharing platform, the 'Banyan Insight Talks' (BITs), a curated series ofgatherings with experts, practitioners, believers and seekers across the East and the West.
Co-Founder & Product Head, Darwinbox
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Chaitanya Peddi, A true subject matter expert of both HR and Technology, heads product & engineering at Darwinbox. His years of experience as an HR consultant has empowered him to understand the specific needs of the HR Tech market and build a world-class product that can not only optimally automate and simplify HR processes for enterprises enables HR to be a game-changing strategic function. But also
An XLRI alumnus, prior to Drawinbox, Chaitanya worked as an HR consultant with Ernst & Young and consulted global firms on organization design and performance management. Having worked in product development at Verizon and combined with his consulting experience, Chaitanya commands a rare vantage point in the HR Tech space.
CEO, Kontempore
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With over 33 years of experience in India and abroad Dr. Sanjay Muthal has a rich background in Consulting, Strategic HR, Recruitment, L&D and Organisation Development.
Dr. Muthal is an Investor and Consultant with Refyne - Asia’s largest financial wellness suite provider. He is also founder and CEO of Kontempore Leadership & Business Solutions which is in the space of Search, Leadership Consulting, HR Technology & Analytics.
Dr. Muthal has held several leadership positions across the HR function. In his last role he was President - HR, Piramal Group. He has also worked with RPG Group, Hinduja Group, MNCs like Parke Davis and Hoechst and had stints in the Middle East and the UK. He also provides strategic advice to many Boards on leadership development and organisation restructuring.
A globally recognized HR influencer, some of his recognitions include “India’s Greatest HR Professional” by World HRD Congress, “HR Achiever” at India Brand Summit, “Outstanding contributions in the field of HR” presented at Asia Pacific HR Congress.
He serves as an Independent Director on the Board of LIC AMC and Mutual Fund. He is also on the Board of NHRDN, the largest HR professional body in India.
CTO & Co-Founder, Vantage Circle
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Anjan is a technology leader with over two decades of experience building and deploying cross-channel web applications. Gifted with a strong analytical mind, he can quickly adapt in new contexts, grasp complexity, link different domains, and communicate with both business and technical people. He has a wide bandwidth of skills in Agile Methodologies, People Management, Software Development, Operations Management, and Networking. As the CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle is responsible for the technological progress and evolution of Vantage Circle. In addition, he has played a key role in the design, architecture, and technical implementation of the company’s core functions.
Co-Founder & Group CEO, PeopleStrong & Taggd, Managing Partner, Caret Capital Board Member, Karmayogi Bharat (India’s Prime Ministers Initiative)
Pankaj is an entrepreneur, who believes in the power of work capital i.e., deploying capital to give meaning and access to work.
He currently serves as the Co-Founder and Group CEO of PeopleStrong, overseeing two independent businesses: PeopleStrong and Taggd. Recently he completed the divestiture of the
Wheebox business, which was acquired by ETS, the world’s largest private nonprofit educational research and measurement organization, known for TOEFL, GRE, and TOEIC.
Managing Partner at Caret Capital, a Venture Capital Fund with a primary focus on startups - powering new value chain of India.
He also serves as the Founder Trustee of YouinYou, a charitable trust dedicated to delivering education to underprivileged children.
Pankaj is an active board member of the Prime Minister's KarmYogi Bharat initiative, actively collaborating with the Government of India to introduce capacity-building measures. He is also on the advisory board of Sunstone Eduversity.
Senior VP - Group HR & Director,
Tata Management Training Center
Anand brings extensive and rich industry experience to his role at TMTC. Before joining TMTC, he was Senior Partner with Deloitte and leader of the firm’s HR Transformation practice. An alumnus of The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, he is a seasoned strategist who has helped organizations across the globe in navigating business challenges by driving transformational change, building talent excellence, critical capabilities, and future leaders. He brings with him over three decades of experience, and has curated some of leading research studies in the field of HR. He joined Deloitte in India in April 2018 and served in this capacity for 3 years. During this time amongst other assignments, he anchored one of the largest Learning Transformations and Integrated Talent Management for one of India’s largest commercial organisations, a large Financial Services Company, A global multi business conglomerate.
Anand moved back to India in 2018 after having spent over 25 years working across 5 countries in 3 continents with 3 leading consulting firms. During that time, he has worked on a wide variety of areas focused on leadership development, establishing corporate universities and learning academies, organization design and structuring, HR Transformation and Technology and Organisation Vision, culture and values.
Immediately before Deloitte, Anand was the Global Chief Commercial Officer for Aon Hewitt setting up of a commercially focused team, which would enhance the firm’s focus on profitable growth and was instrumental in enabling agile, fast, and innovative growth for Aon Hewitt, playing an active role in client, solution and portfolio development across geographies and regions.
Anand is a Global expert in Human resource, Future of Work, Future of HR, Global Talent & HR market knowledge, APAC & MEA cultural and geographic market and market intelligence, a Marshall Goldsmith certified Coach and Mentor.
Anand started his career 32 years ago as part of the pioneer batch of Management Trainees with the Taj Group of Hotels. He then left India to work with a Western European Retail Chain and subsequently switched to management and HR consulting.
Chief People Officer, Times Internet
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Smriti has over three decades of experience divided between Independent Consulting and Corporates
Her previous Corporate roles include Global head Organization Effectiveness, Cognizant
Global Head Leadership Development ,Genpact
Founding Chief People Officer, Exl Services
In Cognizant she started as the CHRO for their BPS arm, leading 50,000 + employees in multiple geographies. Subsequently moving to a global role covering 250000+ employees .
She was amongst the pioneering HR leaders, who shaped the people practices in the Back Office Industry She is an award winning learning designer and an Executive Coach for the CXO suite .
She has been a champion for Diversity & Inclusion throughout her career, and has designed and facilitated first of its kind Diversity workshops with leading universities of India. She led diversity for the 200K employees of Cognizant India, steering them to Industry recognition and awards
Smriti is regularly invited to talk at national and Industry forums on a wide range of topics including HR Transformation, Effective Leadership, Diversity, Motivation & Purpose of ‘Being
Over the years Smriti has supported social causes by contributing her time as a teacher to special needs and underprivileged children . She has lived and worked with rural communities to better understand their challenges.
She is an alumni of Lady Shri Ram DU and XLRI Jamshedpur
EVP & Chief People Officer, Infogain
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Rajiv is a young, dynamic and a fast tracker HR and OD thought Leader who believes in “Self” being the “Instrument of Change”. Having worked with Hi-Tech Industry throughout in his career, he has played a key role in the transformational journey of some of these companies (i.e. Infogain, Dassault Systèmes, GlobalLogic and HCL). Rajiv is inspired with “Employee First” concept and finds it to be the key driver towards catering to the expectations of “Customers” and “Shareholders”.
Delves into everything about people & how organizations source, hire, onboard, engage, and retain talent
Explores aspects of organizational culture and how it impacts employee engagement and business success
Provides insights into developing leadership abilities in leaders in varied organizational settings
Helps analyze the vision and mission of the organization and ingrain them into the HR consciousness
Enables fostering, cultivating and preserving a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion and a sense of belonging in employees
Celebrates path breaking innovations and cutting-edge technologies that shape all things work
