Infosys will set up a number of innovation hubs in the United States, which is the largest export market for Indian information technology (IT) service firms, with its first centre in Indiana, where it will be hiring over 2,000 local engineers. The Bengaluru based IT major will replicate its Indian model of hiring thousands of freshers from campuses and then training and deploying them on projects for customers in the US. Commenting on the new plan, Nandan Nilekani, chairman, Infosys said, “We are looking at how to create more innovation hubs in the US. We will be hiring 2,000 people in Indiana to create local innovations. What we are realising is, over the decades we have built deep capabilities in creating learning infrastructure and capacity building, and that investment is very valuable.” He went on to add, “We are hiring people locally and will see how by using our learning infrastructure we can do capacity building for the future.” Indian IT firms which traditionally sent engineers to work on projects in the US have been increasingly facing political backlash, putting pressure on them to hire local employees. At the same time, a shift in how clients spend technology budgets towards digital projects, where engineers need to work with customers instead of remotely delivering software, is also pushing them to hire more local engineers. It is an opportunity to exchange innovation models with US companies using India’s digital initiatives, in answer to the rapid changes in the use of technology across businesses that require a new set of skills. Indiana is one of many such innovation hubs planned.
Everstone Group has bought the home appliances brand Kenstar from debt-ridden Videocon Group. The Videocon group which is reeling under a debt of over Rs.40,000 crore has been looking for buyers for its various assets including Kenstar in a bid to pay off its debt. This private equity firm in a statement stated that the sale includes the purchase and transfer of the brand and businesses under the brand on a going-concern basis, as well as assets from Century Appliances Ltd. (an associate of the Videocon Group). However, the company did not disclose the deal size. But the transaction as per various reports is pegged at a valuation of about Rs.1,300 crore. The transaction is subject to statutory approvals and specific clearances. Under the agreement, the existing management team at Kenstar led by business head Rajiv Kenue will continue to manage the business, and will be strengthened significantly by the operational capabilities, additional resources and financial investments of the Everstone Group. While Kenstar will operate as an independent business, it will be controlled by Everstone. Besides, Everstone will also enter into a strategic alliance with Videocon Group for manufacturing, cooperation on the Kenstar brand, and developing new products.
In a bid to take up a new endeavour, the Senior Director of IDFC Bank, Ajay Pandey, has called it quits with the bank which he joined in 2015. Pandey has ample experience (30 years) in the HR field which also includes 21 years in banking, BPO, life science industries and nine years in the Indian Air Force. A postgraduate in human resources management/ personnel management from the Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, Pandey started his career with the Indian Airforce’s technical branch in 1984. Prior to joining IDFC Bank, he was associated with ICICI Bank for over a decade, where he joined as the head of HR for customer service and phone banking groups in December 2005. Growing up the ranks over the years, he moved into the role of business HR head for retail assets in May 2007, and then zonal HR head for the East Zone. In June 2013, he took over as the Deputy General Manager-HR and was heading the recruitment practice for the bank. Pandey’s decision to quit comes only a few months after former Tata Sons’ Head-HR, NS Rajan joined IDFC Bank as the Group Chief Human Resources Officer in May this year.
Not only has the Indian cricket captain shattered records on the field, he has also made his presence felt off-field. Virat Kohli recently bagged a Rs.110-crore deal with sports apparel giant Puma this year. He has now been named among the world’s top ten athletes with the ‘highest brand value’, ahead of football legend Lionel Messi. According to the Forbes list, Kohli’s brand value is pegged at $14.5 million, which puts him at the seventh spot. Messi is ninth with a total brand value of $13.5 million. Kohli is the only cricketer in the list. Tennis legend Roger Federer leads the chart with a total brand value of $37.2 million, followed by NBA star player LeBron James at number two and the ‘fastest man on earth’ Usain Bolt at third. The number of billionaires in Asia surpassed the US for the first time though the US still has the greatest amount of billionaire wealth.
National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) is close to naming former Visa India head Uttam Nayak as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) after A. P. Hota retired in August. Nayak is currently Senior Vice President of digital for emerging markets at Visa and had earlier held the position of country manager for India and South Asia at the payments firm. Dilip Asbe, the interim CEO of NPCI, may get a new position of deputy managing director. NPCI didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. Nayak didn’t respond to calls and text messages either. Hota, who was the CEO of NPCI since August 2010 and Asbe had led the introduction of digital payment systems such as Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) since NPCI was set up in 2009. NPCI, an initiative of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) was created to help build a strong payment infrastructure. Its ten core promoter banks are State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank N.A. and HSBC. Last year, it expanded the shareholding to 56 member banks.
Saurov Ghosh fills in the vacant position as the Group HR Head of the National Stock Exchange of India which was lying vacant since June this year after the exit of Chief People Officer Chandrasekhar Mukherjee. Ghosh has spent close to ten years at the Aditya Birla Group, first as the head and executive VP-HR and training with Birla Sun Life Insurance, and then as CHRO for textiles, spinning and acrylic fibre business, a position he had held since 2014. “It was great having spent almost ten years at Aditya Birla Group, but I’ve always wanted to work with diverse industries, and NSE came as an opportunity at a very interesting time. Joining NSE at a time when the whole economy is looking into a growth trajectory, with investors showing huge interest in India brought great prospects of doing meaningful work for further growth of the organisation and its people,” commented Ghosh about the move. Ghosh shares that his role at NSE is a strategic one that involves people responsibilities for its various segments. He looks at creating a culture of mutual respect and pride with strong governance, compliance and regulations and building a strong employer brand, not just in India but globally. In the past, he has worked with YES Bank as the Senior VP-HR retail banking, and with HDFC Life as the Chief Manager-HR. He started his career as a manager-employee relations at CEAT Tyres in 1994, and then worked with Kirloskar Pneumatic Company as a factory manager before joining HDFC Life. Ghosh graduated in law from Pune University and pursued a master’s in personnel management and HR from JDC Bytco IMSR, Pune University. He is a recognised HR professional and has also won various industry awards for the same.
The bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, one of the many pet projects of Narendra Modi which was launched amidst much fanfare, is an exercise in vanity, stated the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to Ahmedabad. He went on to question Modi while asking, “Did the PM consider the alternate of the high-speed train by upgrading broad gauge railways?” The former PM also took a dig at the BJP by asking whether his criticism of the bullet train project would make him anti-national. There were many questions raised by Singh as he said, “By questioning bullet trains, does one become anti-development? Does questioning GST and demonetisation make one a tax evader? This attitude of suspecting everyone to be a thief or anti-national, this low-level rhetoric is damaging democratic discourse,” Singh quipped. This pet project was launched by Modi in the presence of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Ahmedabad. The government has set a deadline of August 15, 2022 for the Ahmedabad- Mumbai high-speed rail network to mark India’s 75th year of Independence. The train is expected to cover a distance of over 500 km in less than three hours. Japan is financing 81 per cent of the Rs.1.08 lakh crore project at 0.1 per cent interest to be repaid over 50 years.
Priyanka Chopra has made it to Forbes’ World’s Most Powerful Women List 2017. The Quantico star Priyanka came at 97th on the list, which also featured Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany on the first spot and also included names like British PM Theresa May, American philanthropist Melinda Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, media personality Oprah Winfrey, Queen Elizabeth II, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina Wajed, American politician Hillary Clinton, philanthropist and paediatrician Priscilla Chan, and The Huffington Post Cofounder and Editor-in-Chief Ariana Huffington. This is the first time Priyanka has made it to the list. Another first-timer is Ivanka Trump who secured the 19th position. The other entertainment personages on the list include singers Beyonce and Taylor Swift, J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame, who were all named in the ‘15 Most Powerful Women In Entertainment and Media list’ released recently. In addition to Priyanka’s recent strides in American movies, after making her Hollywood debut with Baywatch, she is set to star in two more movies, A Kid Like Jake and Isn’t It Romantic. She is currently featured in the third season of her American TV show Quantico, for which she has won two People’s Choice Awards. She is also going to produce an American show based on the life of Madhuri Dixit. Priyanka is also well-known for her contributions as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Earlier this year, Forbes listed Bollywood’s Top 10 highest paid stars, and Priyanka was ranked 7th with earnings of $10 million. She was the only other female star along with Deepika Padukone to have made it to the list.
The HR Director of Johnson & Johnson, Tanvi Choksi moved to Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) India as HR head and director, filling in the position which was lying vacant after Sukhdeep Aurora quit to join ANAROCK as Chief People Officer. She will be based in Mumbai and manage the entire south Asian region including India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Mauritius. Her immediate mandate is to create a people strategy for JLL India in line with business requirements and enabling the continued growth of the business into double digits. Sharing her views, Tanvi said, “JLL is embarking on a journey of HR transformation, my role will be to lead this for India and create a strong HR team”. She believes the challenge in her new role will be to build a robust talent pipeline in the real estate industry, creating best-in-class HR practices for the industry. Tanvi joined Johnson & Johnson in August 2007 as HR Manager, but quickly rose up the ranks as she was elevated as HR director - J&J Medical India & Asia Pacific Diabetes Care. She started as an HR generalist for two business units, the finance and supply chain group, business development as well as sales & marketing services. She also handled talent management, campus recruitment, employee on-boarding and learning & development. She launched a reward and recognition programme (Leadership and Growth Awards) for the entire organisation to create a recognition culture at the workplace. She also introduced the WOW Awards to provide instant recognition across different functions for a job well done. Tanvi was the key person behind the design and launch of the induction programme — GenYsis: A new beginning — for the organisation, as an initiative to increase collaboration and shorten the settling-in time for new joinees at J&J. Tanvi is a two-time winner of the President’s award across J&J Pharma in the Rising Star category in 2009, and then in the Enabling Champion category in 2010. A post-graduate in PMIR and human resources from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Tanvi has also worked for companies such as Tata Motors and Monsanto India as HR manager.
The stage is set for IIT Bhubaneshwar to have a different look as a world-class state-of-the-art Centre of Excellence Research and Entrepreneurship Park is to unfold in its campus. The Odisha Government will help set up the centre, which will offer world-class incubation facility, laboratory, and highly-focused courses along with education and skill development programmes. The centre will be using virtual and augmented reality for immersive visualisation. This centre will focus on grooming and skilling the talent in the country. The decision to set up the centre was taken at the second Startup Council Meeting, where around 130 startup ventures also got recognised under the Odisha Startup Initiative. The Government has decided to aggressively promote innovative entrepreneurship in the state and bring some actionable results. The state has nominated XIMB, Centurian University, IITM and KIIT for evaluating startup proposals and recommending them to the Startup Council. The Centre of Excellence will be developed with the philanthropic contribution of Rs.2.5 crore from Smt. Susmita Bagchi and a grant of Rs.2.5 crore from the state government. In addition, the Software Technology Park of India (STPI) will provide around Rs.2.5 crore for the development of the centre. In the recent past, the Ministry of Human Resource and Development brought in several policies to upgrade the educational institutions in the country.
Jayakumar David has been appointed as India HR head of the Renault-Nissan Alliance. He will operate from the Chennai office. David will also continue to play his previous role as Vice President-HR, RNTBCI (Renault Nissan Technology and Business Centre India). David’s vast experience in human resources includes a previous stint as Head of Human Resources and Associate Vice President of HR at Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB). He was the head of HR at Siemens Information Systems. Besides, he has held different HR roles handling personnel, industrial relations, legal management and so on at companies such as Kennametal India, Strides Arcolab and Shahi Exports. A Bachelor of Arts from Bangalore University, David completed his post-graduation in HR management from the University of Madras. In his current role, he will report to Sumit Sawhney, country CEO and MD, Renault India Operations and Thomas Kuehl, President, Nissan India Operations, with functional reporting to Dominique Dumoulin, Alliance global HR Director, Africa-Middle East-India (AMI) region. For specific entity-related activities, he will report to Krishna Sundararajan, MD, RNTBCI. “We are pleased to welcome David in his new role and extend our full support to him in successfully executing his mandate as we aspire to strengthen the Renault-Nissan Alliance in India,” said Dumoulin.
by Joe Williams
