Bhaskar Bhat, MD of Titan, and Saurabh Agrawal, Group CFO, were inducted into the board of Tata Sons, the promoter of major Tata companies, taking the number of members to 11. Besides the 11 directors, Tata Sons has Ratan Tata as its Chairman Emeritus. But as Chairman Emeritus is an honorary post, Ratan Tata is not included in the board of directors. With the latest addition, Tata Sons now has four directors from within the Group. The other two in-house executives are N Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, and Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover.
Philips India has appointed Armaan Seth as its head of human resources. He will now lead the Indian operations with a focus on fostering inspirational leadership at all levels in the company, and providing employees continued opportunities for growth across functions and geographies. He will also work towards making the Philips culture more inclusive and diverse. Seth has been with Philips for about six years now and has served the company in various positions across India and the Netherlands. He joined Philips in March 2011 as country HR Head-Consumer Durables Business, at the Gurgaon office. He also managed the organisation and people aspects of the disentanglement of the lifestyle entertainment business, and was part of the diversity and inclusion board of the company. In February 2014, he was elevated as global HR business partner for business transformation and enterprise information management (EIM) functions in Philips, and operated from the Netherlands. In January 2016, he became the Company’s Senior Director, Head HR-Global IT function. In this position, he was responsible for transformation towards a new IT operation and organisation model, and establishing a new global footprint in the US, EU and BIC countries. An MBA in PM & IR from XLRI Jamshedpur, Seth has also worked at Marico as HR Manager and Jayesh Sanghrajka & Co LLP as financial auditor, between 2002 and 2011.
NASSCOM and IFIM have come together to train 10,000 students in analytics. With the aim of skilling 10,000 postgraduate students, the IFIM Business School has collaborated with Nasscom and the Central Government to become a licensed training partner in Karnataka. IFIM, in partnership with Nasscom has started a ‘Train the trainer’ programme, where it runs three courses for—associate analytics, junior data analytics and recruitment associate. Having relevant skills is critical for succeeding at the workplace, where advanced technology is being adopted constantly by organisations. This partnership between the Government and private institutions to skill the workforce will enhance the employability of the people. With huge amounts of data generated daily, the importance of data analytics is rising rapidly. The analytics market currently stands at $1.64 billion annually in revenues, at a growth rate of 28.8 per cent CAGR as per the Analytics India Industry Study 2016.
To boost the new recruitment, Apple has come out in a special way—from paid time off and annual gym credit to beer bashes and product discounts. This is a move to attract and retain as many as possible. According to a research, that the new generation workforces focus more on the culture and employee benefits of an employer than on the salary. The decision to join a company depends, to a large extent, on the benefits offered than any other factors. Apple also offers some perks and benefits to its employees, which are very fancy and tempting. The fancy benefits Apple offers to its employees are 12 days of paid time off to its new hires, which increases over time. Paid time off is what everybody seeks. Apart from the younger generation, the company is transforming its culture and caring for their employees more than ever before, with a rise in parental leave, bereavement leave, period leave, and so on. At Apple, the mothers are allowed four weeks of paid leave before delivery and 14 weeks after. While the non-birth parents get six weeks of paid leave. Discounts on the purchase of products and services offered by the companies, is yet another benefit employees appreciate. Apple employees get an annual discount of 25 per cent on purchase of an iPod, computer, or iPad. Also, every three years, the workers can get $250 off an iPad or $500 off a Mac.
Young innovators, Kshitij Jaggi, Kumar Shivang and Rishabh Sahu were adjudged Samsung Innovation awardees to recognise and reward innovative and novel ideas with potential to revolutionise everyday living. They worked on a peer-to-peer financial transaction app using block chain technology in a distributed environment. The aim was to enable financial inclusion of chit fund subscribers with Circle, a mobile-first solution for organisers to easily manage the members, thereby bringing in transparency in the whole process and creating credit history for all Indians.
Team Insomniatec, comprising students Kaustubh Mundra and Sankalp Rastogi, finished behind the champions, who proposed a project that uses an infrared camera coupled with computer vision technology to detect drowsiness in a vehicle driver while in motion, and provides in-time alerts.
One of the projects, Muskan Solid Waste, with founder Hari Shankar and co-founder Mewa Lal found a special mention at the awards. This is a startup that converts organic waste into high-yielding compost. The technique used reduces time for composting and produces more efficient manure compared to artificial fertilisers. The winners were given cash prizes worth `2.5 lakh, while the five finalists received merit recognition from Samsung. The ideas presented will be further developed with the help of Samsung’s R&D Institute, Bengaluru.
This edition of the Awards was initiated at the IIT Kanpur campus six months ago, seeking submission of innovative ideas from students. It was an open-entry process and received a large number of applications this year. The ideas were shortlisted by the professors at the Institute and researchers from SRI-B, who also selected the eight finalists.
Pragya Kumar has been appointed as the Chief People Officer at GirnarSoft. The position was temporarily held by Ankur Agrawal, the business head of the company’s insurance unit. With this move the company has plans to add management structures, so as to accommodate the increasing workforce through its acquisitions and expansion efforts. It also plans to work towards building cultural values in the organisation. Kumar is a proficient HR professional with over 15 years of experience in HR. Prior to joining GirnarSoft, she had been working at Yatra.com for almost seven years before quitting as the head of human resources. She has also worked at companies such as Mentor Graphics India Pvt. Ltd, iBilt Technologies, SAIL and Dorling Kindersley. An alumnus of Delhi School of Economics, Kumar has a masters in human resources from Delhi University. GirnarSoft is a company which operates automobile portals such as CarDekho, Gaadi and Zigwheels. The Company is backed by Google Capital and has a total headcount of 2,000 employees. Commenting on the new appointment, Amit Jain, CEO of GirnarSoft said, “Girnar aims to become one of the top 10 auto sites globally. Our current company culture has led to a successful business. However with Pragya’s expertise, we will have an evolving culture that feeds our business objectives”.
Sonali Ramaiah will now anchor Treebo Hotels, the third largest hotel chain in India. She has been appointed as its head of people to strengthen the culture of the company and make it a preferred employer. With experience of over a decade in human resources she has served in several companies in various HR positions. Sonali has worked at Boeing as senior HR executive, where she was responsible for building the defense and IT teams. A pass out of Xavier Institute of Management & Enterpreneurship, Sonali started her career as a journalist in 1997 at the Deccan Herald Media Company and then joined TVA Infotech in 1998 as business manager. In 2006, she joined Fidelity Investments as assistant manager talent development, where she worked as performance consultant to the business analytics division, enterprise services, and operations functions. For almost four years (August 2010 - July 2014), she worked at Philips Healthcare as Senior Manager, Human Resources, before moving to Cisco as India HR. She has garnered experience working at organisation development, culture change, building leadership competence and driving employee engagement. “Treebo represents a fantastic opportunity for me. In building a ‘digital hotel brand’, the company has assembled different talent pools including those from hospitality, technology, brand building and operations which are all united by the common DNA of customer obsession. As an HR professional, I am excited about the opportunity to work with these different sets of colleagues, to help them grow and develop, and to preserve and strengthen the terrific culture of the organisation,” said Sonali about the move. Commenting on the appointment, Rahul Chaudhary, Cofounder, Treebo Hotels said, “Sonali’s expertise in driving initiatives at global organisations across leadership, coaching and diversity will further help Treebo build a diverse, yet cohesive team. We are excited to have Sonali join the leadership team at Treebo and look forward to her contribution in driving various people initiatives for the company.”
A 20-year-old medical student from Haryana, the winner of Femina Miss India World 2017, Manushi Chhillar was crowned Miss World 2017 Manushi had made it to the top five along with contestants from England, France, Kenya and Mexico. Miss England Stephanie Hill and Miss Mexico Andrea Meza finished as the first and the second runners-up respectively. This title was last won by Priyanka Chopra for India in 2000, a year after Yukta Mookhey had made the country proud. Aishwarya Rai and Diana Hayden and had won the crown in the year 1994 and 1997 respectively. Reita Faria was the first Indian to win the crown in 1966. It has taken 17 years for the crown to make a comeback to India. Manushi’s joyous journey would have been impossible without the proper mentoring and guidance from India’s top models, actors and of course, ace fashion designers, who made sure she looked amazing at every appearance. From Abu Jani, Sandeep Khosla to Manish Malhotra, check out the amazing wardrobe that helped Miss India become the Miss World 2017, all curated by designer Rocky Star and her stylist Sheefa J Gilani.
In a bid to make its presence felt globally, Servion Group has appointed David Raj as its CHRO. Based in Chennai, and as part of the executive officer group, he will be responsible for global HR for both the Group companies—Servion and Acqueon. The firm brings in Raj who is a specialist in customer experience management. Raj moves in from CSS Corp where he was SVP and CHRO. He comes with over two decades of diverse experience which includes manufacturing, IT and finance. In the past he has worked with companies such as Murugappa Group, Rane & Polaris, Virtusa. Raj has a Masters degree in Social Work from Loyola College, Chennai. He has experience across all geographies and functions including startups, change management, acquisition and merger initiatives, IPO process, setting up nearshore centres as well as managing talent across Europe, US and Asia. The Group is on an expansion mode and is beefing up its leadership team at the same time. On a hiring spree, Servion has hired more than 200 people in the past four months. The company wants to ride on factors that video and visual-based technologies are expected to replace 60 per cent of the existing customer management business services across traditional and non-visual digital channels and that the market adoption of mobile apps and chat within the business process is estimated to increase by 300 per cent by 2020. Commenting on the move, Sameet Gupte, CEO, Servion said, “We continue to execute as per our growth plans. This includes strengthening our workforce to meet our expanding customer base and market innovation needs through R&D. As we move to the next level, we will continue to build an exceptional leadership team. We are confident that Raj’s rich experience and proven leadership skills will enable us to build the right people culture and processes required to scale.”
Sandeep Banerjee joins Johnson, a division of Prism, as Head-HR and Senior Vice President. Banerjee served Reliance Industries as the Vice President-HR. His move to a tiles company is a transformation journey and Banerjee will lead its HR agenda, aligning it with the business strategy, helping it grow further. A senior campaigner in the field of HR, Banerjee has worked with large MNCs and Indian conglomerates across service and manufacturing. Joining a midsized company will offer him huge scope of work and empowerment to transform. His objective is to establish strong people practices which are aligned to the business. An alumnus of the National Institute of Personnel Management, Banerjee started his career with the Swedish company ESAB, as Assistant Manager-HR in 1994 before heading to Electrosteel Castings as personnel manager and spent a good five years with the company. Banerjee moved to the hospitality industry, shifting base from Kolkata to Mumbai. He spent a decade at Taj Hotels and rose above the ranks from Area Head-HR to Director-HR for Vivanta Hotels and further on to Head-HR for Luxury Hotels and Vivanta Hotels worldwide. At Reliance, he was managing HR for corporate functions, Aviation, IMGR Fashion, Sports and the upcoming Convention and Luxury Retail at BKC Mumbai.
Axis Bank has won the Dale Carnegie Global Leadership Award 2017, thanks to its advanced people development initiatives, backed with proven statistics and cutting-edge efforts towards L&D with measurable results. Capgemini and Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) finished behind the champions, in that order. When this award was conceptualised by Dale Carnegie & Associates in 1985, the objective was to award and celebrate organisations which were ahead in human capital management, and considered their people as important for the success of the organisation as any technology, patent or business strategy. The nominees for this award are assessed thoroughly—for their cutting-edge investment in human capital and on the basis of the key goals and initiatives taken in the following three broad categories: organisational structure, learning & development and employee engagement. This year for the prestigious award, they received applications from 34 Indian companies. HR professionals from the foremost organisations were honoured for their significant achievements, celebrating the success of their people development.
by Joe Williams
