No matter what the economy of the country is going through, nothing seems to affect the wealthiest of our country. Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani tops the Forbes annual list of 100 richest tycoons followed by Wipro Chairman Azim Premji. Ambani leads the list with a net worth of $38 billion, Azim Premji stands at $19 billion. In spite of business facing difficulties in the aftermath of the demonetisation of high-value currency last November and rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in July this year, India’s 100 wealthiest tycoons have seen their combined net worth zooming to a whopping $479 billion, up 26 per cent from $374 billion in 2016. Meanwhile, the Bollywood stars too had their share with Shah Rukh, Salman Khan, and Akshay Kumar among the world’s top 10 richest actors this year. Among Indian actors, Shah Rukh Khan ranks the highest in the world at 8th with $38 million in earnings during the period. Salman Khan is ranked 9th with an earning of $37 million and Akshay Kumar is 10th with $35.5 million.
Robin Leopold has been appointed as Head of HR at JP Morgan Chase. Till now, she was HR Head for the organisation’s corporate and investment bank. She takes charge from John Donnelly who goes as Vice Chairman and Senior Adviser to the Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon. The 51-year-old Donnelly has been the CHRO since 2009 and has spent 30 years with JP Morgan Chase. He will continue to work on executive succession, recruitment and coaching. Leopold had a vast experience of 20 years with the Citigroup before joining JP Morgan in 2010. She started her career with the American Stock Exchange in 1996, with degrees in psychology and business management from the University of Massachusetts. Talking about the move, CEO Dimon boasted about his firm’s progress in boosting diversity, particularly with African- American and women employees. He talked about their focus on school recruitment, retention and hiring of ‘more senior African-American talent,’ and highlighted the fact that now a black woman runs their retail division.
The largest moneylaundering scheme ever, said the former Union minister Arun Shourie about the Narendra Modi government’s demonetisation saga. Shourie also blamed the note ban and a poorly implemented Goods and Services Tax (GST) for inducing the current slowdown. A tax reform is being compared to the independence of India,’ said Shourie. He called the midnight ceremony for GST launch `event management’. Shourie’s comments came after former Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha criticised the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dispensation over demonetisation and GST. Both of them served in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and have been vocal about their views on the Modi government’s economic policies. Reacting to the comments, BJP dismissed Shourie and Sinha’s criticisms as coming from `frustrated politicians’ who have been side-lined.
Ola, which has been without top drivers for quite some time has filled in the vacuum by appointing two seniors to strengthen their battle against Uber Technologies Inc., in the Indian market. Harish Abichandani comes in as Chief Financial Officer, and Ganesh Subramanian as Vice President, Human Resources. Abichandani was formerly Chief Financial Officer with Flipkart’s logistics arm eKart, while Subramanian was the Director in charge of Human Resources, Enterprise and Technology Solutions at Unilever. Prior to Flipkart, Abichandani was CFO at Tata Teleservices. Ola has been struggling to find a new CFO after Rajeev Bansal left the company in February. Pallav Singh, Vice President, Operations at Ola, was the interim CFO. There have been many top personnel exiting Ola, which last raised $250 million from Softbank. Last month, Deep Singh, Senior Director, Operations resigned. Earlier this year, Sriram V Iyer, Head of Engineering and Senior Director at Ola Innovation Labs also resigned. Ola’s Chief Operating Officer of Offline Initiatives, Anuj Bhargava, who was instrumental in launching initiatives like Ola Play quit the firm, which was followed by Raghuvesh Sarup, Chief Marketing Officer at Ola who joined Microsoft India at the same position.
Rajnish Kumar has been appointed Chairman of the largest public sector bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), replacing Arundhati Bhattacharya who completed her one-year extended term recently. It will be a task cut out for Kumar to address the issue of huge Non-Performing Assets (NPA) of the bank. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet approved Kumar’s appointment for three years from the date of taking charge on or after October 7, said an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT). Kumar, aged 59, joined the SBI board on May 26 2015. Prior to this appointment, he was Managing Director — Compliance and Risk, and Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of SBI Capital Markets Limited, the merchant banking arm of the SBI, according to his official bio-data. Kumar has also worked as Chief General Manager Project Finance and Leasing Strategic Business Unit. He has held several key assignments across various business verticals, including two overseas assignments in Canada and the United Kingdom. Arundhati Bhattacharya became the first woman chairperson of the SBI in 2013. She was given a year’s extension in October last to ensure continuity, as the SBI was then in the process of absorbing five associate banks. State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Travancore and Bharatiya Mahila Bank merged with the SBI earlier this year.
Sanmitra Trivedi is the new president and CHRO of Finolex Industries. He was the Senior VP and Head-HR, Petroleum Refining & Marketing at Reliance Industries. With three decades of experience across industries, Trivedi has also served on the committees of NASSCOM, CII and Petrofed. Trivedi will now be based out of Pune, operating from the PVC manufacturer’s headquarters. Prior to this, he has worked with Larsen & Toubro, Verizon Data Services, NCR Corporation, Halliburton and Atos Origin. Trivedi began his professional journey in 1988 at Mukand, where he worked for nine years. He was acknowledged by the Chairman and MD of the company for his extraordinary performance and growth. He joined Halliburton in 1997 and led HR for all legal entities in India and Bangladesh. He also implemented the global merger of Halliburton and Dresser Industries in India.
In their bid to approach many, Tata Cliq, the e-commerce arm of retail firm Trent Ltd, will separate the luxury version of its website, and also launch a separate app for luxury brands. This will include clothing brand Armani, bags brand Michael Kors and men’s formal wear brand Brooks Brothers, according to a top company executive. Elaborating on the move, Ashutosh Pandey, Chief Executive Officer at Tata Cliq stated, “Luxury started as an experiment and we had to choose what the right assortment was for ‘luxury’ in India.” And went on to add, “We saw a lot more traction on the more premium end of our brands. A lot of customers browse our (luxury) site. The conversion is low but they keep coming, the customers there are sticky.” The company will also launch three new categories including one for Indian luxury brands, Pandey said, along with seven to eight new brands to be sold on the platform, although he declined to name them. India does not have a clearly defined luxury e-commerce firm on the lines of websites such as Net-a-Porter and Matches.com in the US and UK respectively. This attempt to specialise comes at a time when the focus on fashion and apparel sales in e-commerce is increasing in India. While Amazon and Flipkart went on sale, Aditya Birla Group’s apparel e-commerce website abof.in announced it was closing operations by the end of this calendar year. However, e-commerce industry pundits are of the opinion that selling luxury online, particularly in fashion, is a difficult task in India. The potential market for websites like Tata Cliq could be Tier II and Tier III towns where businessmen and elite consumers are looking to spend on luxury brands whose physical stores are not present.
Indian Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra is among the 2017 Forbes magazine’s list of world’s highest paid TV actresses, led by Modern Family star Sofia Vergara. Priyanka is ranked eighth in the list. With the success of the popular American thriller series Quantico, Priyanka is the only Indian celebrity in the list. She managed to rake in $10 million between June 2016 and June 2017, reports forbes.com. Vergara retained the top spot in the list for the sixth year in a row. Best known for her role as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett in Modern Family, Vergara collected $41.5 million. She was followed by Kaley Cuoco, who earned $26 million, thanks to the hit comedy show The Big Bang Theory. Mindy Kaling and Ellen Pompeo are tied at the third spot as they both earned $13 million each. Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order, Special Victims Unit fame rounded off the top five with an earning of $12.5 million. She was followed by Julie Bowen ($12 million) and Kerry Washington ($11 million) at the sixth and seventh positions respectively. Priyanka, who made her Hollywood debut with Baywatch earlier this year, left behind Robin Wright ($9 million) and Pauley Perrette ($8.5 million), who came ninth and tenthth respectively.
In its bid to strengthen its digital offerings to clients globally, the country’s third largest IT services company Wipro has acquired US-based design and business consultancy firm Cooper, which counts Google and Starbucks as clients. Cooper, which Wipro is buying for $ 8.5 million (`56 crores), will be integrated with Designit, the digital arm of the Indian firm as CEO Abidali Neemuchwala deepens the company’s expertise in digital offerings and focus on earning higher revenue. Cooper’s founders Sue Cooper and Alan Cooper will join Wipro to push the company’s aggressive digital strategy. Alan Cooper is considered the ‘Father of Visual Basic,’ and is a prominent player in interaction design, UX (User Experience) and professional design education for more than 25 years. Wipro also gets access offices in New York and San Francisco with the acquisition. Wipro said Cooper would also help the company expand its reach in the North American market and add capabilities in professional design education. Wipro acquired Designit for nearly `595 crore in July 2015 to add design and digital technology capabilities. Commenting on the move, Rajan Kohli, Global Head and Senior Vice President, Wipro Digital, said, “With Cooper, an acknowledged leader and pioneer in the design community with roots on both the Eastern and Western coasts, we will now be the pre-eminent firm for world-class UX and interaction design. This coupled with Designit’s global strategic design services and our world-class engineering capability, will allow us to support the complete digital journey for our clients, helping them transform their businesses for the future.” Wipro’s digital arm and Designit currently serve clients from across 16 offices in different markets in the world.
Anuranjita Kumar joined Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) as the Managing Director, Human Resources for International Hubs. Anuranjita will be based out of Gurugram, while she’ll be travelling extensively to the UK and other locations under international hubs. Anuranjita has been the Managing Director, Chief Human Resources Officer-South Asia at Citi since 2012. She is a business management graduate from XLRI, who began her professional journey at Procter & Gamble in 1994, a post at which she joined Citibank in 1995, and stayed with the brand for over 21 years. She rose up the corporate ladder at Citi, working across geographies —the US, Middle East, Africa, Europe and South Asia. Talking about the move she said, “RBS is at an exciting phase in its journey, where it is getting out of the legacy and the past, and swiftly moving forward into the next phase with the people agenda at its core. This is where I see a great opportunity to make a difference.” She is a well-recognised and revered HR professional, and was the first woman management committee member at Citi India. She was also the first South Asian and woman leader to be appointed as Head of HR, Global Banking, EMEA in 2007. Anuranjita has always had talent development at the top of her agenda as she calls it, ‘Talent with a big T’. Even at RBS now, she is looking forward to nurturing a strong employer brand with meticulous focus on talent development, along with building managerial and leadership capabilities, enhancing employee engagement and operational excellence.
After being 20 years with Taj Hotels, Sanjay Bose moved to ITC Hotels as the Vice President-HR. After having joined Taj Hotels in 1995, Bose had grown through the ranks and last served as the Vice President-HR Operations at the company. He was responsible for the entire global HR operations for the Taj Group in his last role. Bose completed his MBA in HR from the Xavier Institute of Social Service in 1995 and that’s when he kick-started his career with The Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi as an Assistant Manager- HR. He had a generalist HR exposure in his formative years as he managed employee life cycle events in his first role. He also worked in the area of labour legislation, domestic enquiries and court cases, and conceived and implemented a computerised database for HR records back then. In 1999, he joined the corporate HR team at Taj Hotels and deployed an HRIS system across all 60 hotels of the company. He worked extensively in the area of M&A and was part of a team that oversaw four large acquisitions for the Group. He was also part of a three-member core team that designed and implemented a rightsizing exercise for the company. Bose took up an advanced management development programme at IIM, Bangalore in 2002.
by Joe Williams
