India's 100 Great People Managers

With more than 17 years of experience in the facilities management industry, Kulkarni is responsible for operations and business development in Property Solutions (India) Private Limited (PSIPIL), for Pune and the 'rest of Maharashtra' regions. PSIPL is a leading facilities management company in India.

He believes in the power of continuous learning and executes policies that go way beyond one-time improvement.

Aikta Tyagi brings an experience of 18+ years in facilities management, events and travel. At Amway, a company that sells health, beauty and home care products, she has been able to transform special events into a strategic powerhouse.

Her people practices do not just positively impact her team, but thousands of distributors associated with Amway too.

Alok Pratap Singh has been associated with CORE Diagnostics for five years now. CORE Diagnostics is one of the largest high-end clinical laboratories in India and was founded by Zoya Brar in 2012. Singh has been instrumental in building up its sales network pan India, and is one of the best performers in the sales division.

According to his team, he is a dynamic, self-motivated, result-oriented leader and a people person. He is passionate about grooming and helping his team succeed, and tackling any stress they may face.

A true-blue entrepreneur, Ramani is the founder and CEO of Awfis Space Solutions, one of India's largest shared workspace companies, with 30,000 seats across 63 centres in 10 cities in India. Ramani is also the vice chairman and strategic advisor of NCUBE India. A guest lecturer at Cornell University, New York University and Texas A&M, he has received numerous accolades for his successes.

While a lot of his practices stand out to his employees, his focus on ensuring that all his direct reports work on their personal brands is 'special'. His team says he tries to understand the abilities of each individual personally and then helps them plan how to maximise these areas.

Currently the managing director and group CEO of Vakrangee Limited, Khanna has also excelled as a people manager in his role as managing director of Blue Dart Express Limited. Vakrangee is a technology-driven last mile connectivity company, while Blue Dart is a premier express air and integrated transportation & distribution company.

His innovative policies on recognition involving career development makes him greater than many other MDs and business leaders. He has drawn insights from his firm belief in the power of people to become a turnaround specialist par excellence.

As part of the senior leadership team at HDFC Life, Shah has created a structural engagement framework where daily team engagement happens in 350-plus branches across the country, engaging and motivating more than 5,500 employees. They are directly engaged in driving business and part of one of the largest distribution channels at HDFC Life.

Shah's people management policy is 'Empower, Enable and Engage'. He executes his policies through innovative ways that also includes the strategic use of social media.

Jain is responsible for real-estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield's business in India. He focuses on the firm's strategy and growth, and much of his time is spent in sales, building new client relationships and solidifying the old, for transactional and annuity businesses. In a leadership position for the past 10 years in India, Jain has developed deep personal relationships with developers, real-estate funds and occupiers, and he leverages his experience and relationships to resolve complex real-estate problems for clients.

As a people manager, he empowers his team members by providing them with multi-cultural exposure.

An accomplished software professional with strong technical background and global experience, Khan has worked across software engineering, products and research organisations over 18 years. Currently, he runs engineering teams for ads, application performance monitoring, blockchain and API gateways, at Rakuten India, part of the global internet giant Rakuten.

As a people manager, he believes in bringing out innovation in all his team members so that they can go beyond conventional KRAs.

Vijayan holds a bachelors in technology from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology and an MBA from Symbiosis Center for Management and Human Resource Development. Currently at Beroe, a procurment intelligence company specialising in customised market research, he has been an effective programme manager, and has demonstrated proficiency in overseeing strategic and transformational projects across supply chain management. He has also authored a whitepaper in supply-chain financing.

He executes the unique and effective HR policies of Beroe, with some sprinkling of his own, making an overall strong impact.

With two decades of experience in various finance roles, inside and outside Signify, Joshi has worked as F&A lead, finance business partner, FP&A head and finance service centre head, across India and China. He established the Finance Service Centre for Signify in Q1 2018, with a 30-member team for the growth markets region in Gurgaon. It serves diverse markets including India, ASEAN, Pacific, Africa and Middle East, for accounting and business reporting.

His working style, says his team, helps bring out the best from his team, making him an inspiring leader for them.

Roona has led Cinepolis India HR over the past five years, and is an alumnus of XISS, Ranchi and Jesus & Mary College, Delhi. Her personal mantra is to set stretch goals and focus on developing high-performing teams.

She has displayed an ability to deisgn and implement special practices for her team while nurturing great people managers in her organisation.

Bansi Raja of Gozoop is well known for spearheading milestone HR policies within the marketing industry. One of the driving forces behind the company's menstrual leave policy, which made headlines in 2017, she is consistently exploring avenues to increase employee satisfaction and engagement, vital to creating a great millennial workplace.

She is able to communicate the vision and purpose of work very candidly to her team members, while being transparent and building strong and trusting relationships.

Singh has spent 14 years visualising and overseeing change initiatives at highly challenging life-science and Molecular Diagnostics (MDX) market, which is growing at 11% CAGR globally. As director and country manager at Fast-Track diagnostics Asia - A Siemens Healthineers company, Brijesh has led design, development and manufacturing of infectious disease detection kits.

He believes in developing his team members through innovatively conceptualised practices such as 'Project Compass'. This is what makes his organisation a company with great people managers.

An engineer and MBA with more than 21 years of experience in technical sales and marketing, Debasis has worked with global leaders of electronics components and solutions. He is currently employed with one such global leader, Avnet, one of the world's largest distributors for electronic components.

He is able to execute practices that bring out the craziest best in his team members. He brings in fun in situations that may be too stressful at times.

Shrivastava heads the and compliance vertical for Amway India Enterprises, based out of Gurgaon. He has a law degree from Law Campus, Delhi and has 19 years of experience. He has previously worked with organisations such as GSK Consumer Healthcare, Kellogg India etc.

He focuses on building and maintaining strong employee morale irrespective of the situation.

A graduate in commerce and member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), Jain, (fondly called DJ), is both the CFO and HR Head at YASH. He promotes the motto of 'Happy Us, Happy YASH' and actively and strategically aims to deliver on it. His practices are unique. For example, employees indulge in a '2 Truths and 1 Lie' exercise to help them bond and become more transparent with each other, under the theme 'Connect'. They learn from their mistakes and get guidance on how to better serve the customers (theme "develop"), and bring in fun and celebrations (theme "Inspire").

In his role as the president of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC), Dilipkumar Khandelwal is responsible for SAP's HEC Business globally. He has teams across the globe and is a member of the global executive team at SAP, reporting into the executive board. In his dual role, he is also the managing director for SAP Labs in India, where he is responsible for SAP's development facilities in Bengaluru, Pune and Gurugam, with close to 9,600 employees.

Khandelwal extends strong influential leadership, combined with intercultural skills. He has a special practice branded 'Getting Lost', which displays how a single change can make a big impact.

A PhD in management and a gold medallist in BBA as well as MBA, Singh has studied HR and business strategy-related executive management programmes from IIM-A, ISB-Hyderabad and XLRI. She has received several HR awards. She leads various aspects of human resources at Cignex Datamatics, a global pure-play open source consulting company.

Her practices ensure greater bonding amongst team members by allowing them to experience unique situations that extract the best out of all.

A researcher, professor and corporate leader, his journey spans academia and industry. He is currently a leader at Omniactives, a company that aims to enhance nutrition and wellness through science and innovation.

His team management practices have a unique stamp of technology and research, combined with regular people management.

A medical graduate from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, and an MD from Delhi University, Tewari's career has been in corporate hospitals after a Short Service Commission tenure with the Indian Army in the Army Medical Corps. She believes that phase of her life taught her discipline, self respect and respect towards a task assigned, so that it is accomplished with integrity and team spirit.

In her work at Artemis Hospital Gurugram, she embodies the same principles. She handles the clinical management of patients as well as runs a team of qualified doctors and nurses. Her practices help bring happiness in a stressful environment.

An avid reader and an erudite scholar in Sanskrit, Dr Shikha Tiwari is a great orator and has a penchant for writing poetry. An integral part of the T John fraternity, she is the principal of T John College, a leading Arts, Science, Commerce and Management college in Bengaluru.

A believer of collaborative leadership, she uses her academic brilliance in her people practices.

Engineer is a technology enthusiast with project management expertise. His current fields of work include the Internet of Things, augmented reality, R&D on development of machines for pharma inspection, machine vision, optics, spectroscopy, Process Analytics Technology (PAT), etc. At ACG, the only supplier in the world offering integrated manufacturing solutions for the pharmaceutical industry, Engineer has managed global projects.

He applies his scientific thinking in people management by diligentl

Widely considered to be an industry thought leader with numerous accolades to her name, Jyot is also actively involved in various social causes. At RMSI, a global GIS consulting company, she has worked towards implementing innovative corporate wellness and corporate social responsibility programmes.

Her practices around fast-track growth of her team members, while ensuring their development through empowered and innovative thinking, make her a great people manager. Her oratory skills and her excellence as a strategic thinker inspire her team members to bring out their best.

Ganesan S heads the quality department at Biesse Manufacturing Company Private Limited, for the past seven years. Biesse provides a comprehensive range of technologies and solutions for joiners, and large furniture, windows, doors and timber building components manufacturers, by providing a range of machines for wood and advanced materials processing.

He believes in teaching and developing his team members, while also shielding them from troubles.

Gaurav Seth has managerial experience of 6+ years and is currently working as a solution architect at Beno Software. Beno Software is a leading agile-focussed product engineering and services company, working on niche technologies such as Node.js, React.js, Python/ Django.

Seth has displayed people practices that use his software development expertise, showing a new style of people management for coders and developers.

Singh is alumnus of Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) with 11 years of experience in fintech and financial services. He is part of the senior leadership team at PayU. At PayU, he has led SME merchant payments business and credit business verticals, building well-known brands such as PayUmoney, a way to collect payments for SMEs that can go live within minutes with 100% digital onboarding; and PayUmonedo, a 100% digital and cardless consumer-lending product.

He applies his entrepreneurial traits in his people management practices and displays how industry knowledge can be key in people management.

Rao is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience in software development. He has been with Rakuten for about two years and has handled multiple business verticals, including ecommerce, crawler, catalogue and content teams, data science etc. He was instrumental in managing complex business profiles and scaling the departments to the next level. He is known to all his team members as a strong leader, yet easily approachable. He also empowers managers reporting to him to become great people managers.

In the past 10 years at Beroe, Soundararajan has supervised more than 1,000 deep dive projects across a wide range of industries such as healthcare/ life sciences, agro-chemicals, consumer packaged goods, chemicals, BFSI, retail, energy and mining.

As a young leader working with millennials, he uses social media effectively as a people management tool.

Harshal Ichale has been integral to Gozoop's in-house production team since 2015. He started his journey as a video editor and wears more than one feather in his hat--he is adept at motion graphics, audio and visual editing and photography. Currently, he is executing memorable and impactful campaigns for industry stalwarts such as Shantanu Nikhil, Ace Blend, Star Bharat, Taj, Asian Paints, Alienware, KKR, MCFC, Dell India, Dabang Delhi, IIFA and more.

He can be considered a role model for people managers working with creative team members, as his practices are designed around his understanding of his team.

Currently heading sales and marketing at Hella India Lighting, part of Multinational Hella Group, a global giant in Automotive lighting plus E&E components, Chauhan has shown exceptional growth in the corporate ladder.

A 30-year old sales leader in this list, Chauhan has achieved greatness in people management by achieving sales results through a stress-free development-focused environment in the team.

Joshi is responsible for maintaining excellence in delivery management across client engagements at Nexval. He juggles a wide range of management roles, across operations, client management and business development. With a career of 20+ years, he has built expertise in the domestic and international markets across the banking and financial services domain.

He believes in the power of fostering collaboration, empowering performance and driving excellence across business domains, for delivering results in a constantly evolving business environment. His people philosophy is "RPA : Respect People Affectionately", regardless of their performance.

Kadam has more than three decades of experience in the glass industry, having played an integral role in the management takeover of Maharashtra Safety Glass by Saint Gobain. At Shree Ashtavinayak Glass, he is in the hard core role of Operations.

He focuses on business results and is able to judge the success of people policies with the success in business.

Freitas currently leads the HR team at Dream11. He is passionate about building great workplaces through genuinely great managers, and is intent on making great leadership a habit. He credits his team, 'Dreamsters', for setting up a winning team.

His practices ensuring data driven autonomy in his team are exemplary.

With 18 years of experience in fields such as ADL, quality control and technology transfer, Shah is currently working at Ami Lifesciences Pvt Ltd, a company with scientific and technological capabilities, research, and manufacturing competencies in the field of pharmaceuticals.

Most of his practices that set him apart are around guidance for his team members.

EdCIL (India) Limited is a Mini Ratna Category-1 CPSE under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, offering management and consultancy services in education and human resource development. Gautam says he has been nurtured by this PSU to become a great people manager.

In this world of stress, where mental health is constantly under attack, his practices are unique and aim to reduce work stress by removing unnecessary complexities.

Kalyanaraman has been in the Ozone group since more than 10 years, and has experience of more than 22 years handling customer relations and engagement.

He has evolved his strategies with time, in customer management as well as in people management. He focuses on the personal growth and development of his team members, and is regarded as approachable and caring.

Malligeswari leads a team of costing and forecasting specialists at Beroe, which is a procurement intelligence company specialising in customised market research. She has rich experience in estimating and analysing macroeconomics and costing of commodities across industries.

She believes in the cohesive responsibility with individual ownership of outcomes within the team. She strives to bring out the best of the team by creating an environment of continuous learning, and imparting personal connect

Lahoty is a graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce and Cardiff University. He has been a partner with L&L for over nine years, leading a team of five other partners and 15 associates in Delhi and Mumbai. His practice has achieved, among many other milestones, the largest Indian IPO (Coal India), the largest Indian block sale (by Daiichi in Sun Pharmaceutical), and India's flagship sovereign equity-ETF (CPSE ETF).

A leading capital markets lawyer, he has an informal style to his people management, earning him genuine respect and love from his colleagues.

Sharma is a product development director for the media products at Dunnhumby, India. With his enthusiasm deeply rooted in technology, his repertoire includes designing highly scalable, sustinable and loosely coupled software solutions, including complex system integrations. He has worked for Dunnhumby from multiple geographies, including the UK, US and India. Dunnhumby is a global customer data science company.

He harnesses the power of technology for better people management.

Manoj has 13 years of experience in the mortgage domain. He has worked on varied assignments within the originations, servicing and title functions. In the current role, he is responsible for overall operations management and designing solutions based on thought leadership, aimed at enhancing the value proposition of Nexval's offerings and maintaining customer delight.

Through his unique practices such as the 'Innovation Lab', he is able to demonstrate his all-round effectiveness as a people manager.

Having worked and grown with Cinepolis, Pramanik has grown to become a great people manager, while managing multiple units at this multiplex chain.

He has designed and executed several noteworthy policies around communication, with support from the leadership of Cinepolis.

Munoz has over 28 years experience, spanning multiple geographies, in the hospitality sector. He has worked with various internationally recognised hospitality brands. At Mahindra Holidays & Resorts, he is the chief resorts officer and also oversees the resort sales division.

He designs practices for his team members that can also positively impact the customer experience at the resorts.

With over 28 years of experience in management systems certification, training and project management, Sharma has specialisation in social accountability and quality management systems. She leads the BSI India Business Excellence Team as director assurance and has been acknowledged for her leadership across the BSI world.

Her honest efforts and practical ways of developing her team members make her a great people manager. She also serves as a role model for both her male and female reports.

Sharma, an avid golfer, reader and cricket player, takes pride in having organically built one of the largest independent software testing and quality engineering companies. His vision centres around excellence, partnership and commitment in the operations of the organisation, QA Infotech.

Among other things, his practices involve working with junior employees to take them through a development process and fast-tracking their careers, unprecedented in several other organisations.

Gannamani is the managing director and CEO of Fluentgrid Limited. Fluentgrid is a leading turnkey systems integration provider of smart energy and smart city technology solutions based in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. A visionary entrepreneur and a second-generation technocrat with more than 27 years of experience in manufacturing and IT industries, he is passionate about technological innovation, green-tech and urban modernisation.

His people practices focus so much on skill development that his team has filed for multiple patents recently. He understands the direct correlation between business performance and people management.

Batterywala has more than 15 years of experience in IT and people management. He has worked on advanced technologies of cloud, big data and DevOps. He likes to follow new technology and tries to use it to provide innovative and effective solutions to customer requirements. At Impetus, he has worked with multiple teams.

He encourages teams to learn new skills without the pressure of performance, and then uses those skills for business development using his own technical skills.

A passionate finance manager with six years of experience, he has been nurtured by the team of Mahindra Finance to become a great people manager.

He believes that a focus on developing his team members is key to his growth as a leader of people, and applies unique strategies to achieve the same.

Navaneeth is a polyglot and has worked with major languages such as Ruby, Python, etc. He is also a CI/CD, agile practitioner. At HackerEarth, he is responsible for product quality. Started in 2006, he has over a decade of experience across service companies and product startups. He has built QA teams from scratch and set effective QA processes. His focus at HackerEarth, which is a global hub of 2M+ developers, is to establish the quality charter and help HackerEarth build enterprise products.

His people management style reflects a merger of his knowledge of technology with his knowledge of people.

Varigepalli has built a career at Apollo, where he just marked 20 years of service at various levels. In his current stint at Apollo Speciality Hospitals, Nellore, he serves as unit head. Earlier, he was the business development head at Apollo Hospitals, Greams Road, Chennai.

Developing and supporting people while being approachable, Naveen has always treated his team as people first, thus positively impacting lives of many.

Chauhan is responsible for highly scalable, automated, elastic, accountable and auditable infrastructure and people practice, including interfacing with the service partners (banks and other TSPs) and customers (usually ecommerce giants) for business continuity and resilience.

At PayU, he has shown to execute globally revered people practices in his own style.

Panchal leads the team of mechanical designers and instrumentation engineers at SciTech Vision–ACG Inspection System Pvt Ltd–to customise solutions for track and trace; and vision inspection requirement of pharma industry.

He uses social media in intelligent ways in his people management practices.

An NIT Surathkal – E&E and IIM-Ahmedabad graduate, Sharma was one of the students selected to undergo a sustainability management diploma programme, sponsored by Swedish Institute in Stockholm.

At Raychem RPG, he currently drives non-linear growth. Prior to this, Sharma was heading solar and energy storage business. He also worked as head of corporate strategy and business development, along with being CIO and digital officer for the organisation, where he incubated many new businesses and business models. His people practices around approachability are quite unique.

With 17+ years of experience in international business and 12 years of experience in packaging for the pharma and food industries, Ashar has spent 12 years in the global market in regions such as Europe, Middle East, Africa, SAARC and South East Asia. At ACG, he heads business development for aluminium products at the film and foils division. He has worked to remove the stigma associated with negatives in team members by clearly identifying the same for all members, and working towards development as a team.

A keen observer of consumer and media trends, Dasgupta is the first CEO of BARC India, a joint initiative by broadcasters, advertising agencies and advertisers to develop a new broadcast audience measurement system. His career has been in media and consumer industries, where he did large and small startup media projects. He has a special ability to brand and project his people practices in a way that leaves a maximum impact on his team.

Breloff manages Shortlist, a talent matching platform working in India and East Africa to connect skilled professionals to purposeful companies. Before Shortlist, he was the founder and managing director of Accion Venture Lab, a financial inclusion-focused venture capital fund. Under his leadership, Venture Lab invested in 24 financial technology startups across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the US. He is proud that a majority of Shortlist's leadership team is women, and is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion at every level at Shortlist.

Sinha is a business operations, property and procurement manager. Her role at Dunnhumby includes defining and ensure smooth execution of the end-to-end processes in procurement and office operations.

Her growth is also a testament to Dunnhumby's policies around nurturing great people managers. Her practices around care for her team members make her a trustworthy manager, who is considered 'genuine' by her team members.

A seasoned and well-recognised professional in supply chain management and vendor development management, with an overall experience of more than 13 years, Shukla loves writing poems besides managing multiple product lines at Casa. Casa Brands manages Bonita, a home utility-products brand.

Shukla is considered an inspirational leader and develops his team by walking the talk.

An alumnus of IHM Chandigarh, Aggarwal has spent 20 years in the hotels and resorts industry. Currently at Mahindra Holidays, where he is a cluster head – heading resort operations of Uttrakhand and North East of India -- he specialised in pre-opening, resort operations and people management. He is a perfect example of how one's own style can dictate the execution of the policies recommended by the management, for an even greater impact.

With over 30 years of experience in the IT Industry, Guntupalli currently serves as the executive deputy chairman of the Board of Directors of Attra, a company whose India subsidiary co-founded in 2005. During his tenure as CEO, Attra has transformed from a niche IT consulting firm to an established payment-technology IT services provider covering North America, EMEA and APAC. A Harvard alumnus with a commerce background, he is a technology leader who designs policies that allows his technical leaders to organically evolve and develop.

Carrying 30+ years of marketing legacy, Jonnavithula has been in the company for 11 years. By executing brand recall strategies, he has tried to make Vaibhav Jewellers a household name in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

His prime strength lies in connecting with his staff, sharing knowledge, identifying potential and encouraging and guiding them to achieve their personal and professional goals, creating opportunities to develop, besided being a role model.

Having started his role with Mahindra Finance in 2007 when he handled business and collections in the three districts of Godda, Pakur and Sahebganj in Jharkhand, Jha currently handles a team of 60 collection executives and seven ACMs, covering 29 branches across Jharkhand state. He focuses on the development of his team members in his people management.

Debray and his team serves both the B2C and B2B/B2G customers at Signify Innovations India Ltd (erstwhile Philips Lighting India Ltd), making his role in supply chain very diverse and demanding.

His practices have proved to be helpful in rediscovering people's own potential, self-grooming, resolving conflicts amongst the team, appreciating each other, living a better work-life balance, experiencing the feeling of a close-knit family within the work area and most importantly, feel more complete as an individual, on a personal front.

Mandal looks after direct marketing at Mahindra Finance, focusing on the Sikkim and Bardhaman (West Bengal) area. His core work at the company involves stakeholders who secure new and pre-owned car loans, through direct marketing channels.

His managerial style is woven around his ability to focus on the development of his team members, through regular doses of practical and theoretical knowledge. His 'buddy practice" programme is an unconventional take on a managerial tactic.

Graduated as electrical engineer, Bhoi has risen the ranks in the past six years, having over 10 years of experience in the power distribution and project execution business. He believes in empowering people and focuses on his target achievement skills.

FEDCO (Feedback Energy Distribution Company Ltd) believes electricity is one of the most important requirements in the modern world and uses employees such as Bhoi to achieve its vision. His people management policies are a twist on conventional textbook policies of people management.

Kovelamudi is an ambitious serial entrepreneur, leading Prasad Hospitals at the young age of 25, while also managing companies Socalight and Omnimed.

As a young leader, he is able to inspire his team by focusing on their learning and development. His practices around education and learning of his team members allows him to become a natural leader.

Banerjee has been in the hospitality industry for more than 24 years, spanning different countries and regions including Oman, Nepal and India in both franchised and managed brands.

In his current role as the general manager of Crowne Plaza New Delhi Okhla, Banerjee oversees the hotel operations and sales and marketing functions, and guides the respective departments with effective strategies to achieve the targets, besides managing the asset on behalf of the owners. His practices around approachability make him a much loved GM in the hospitality industry.

Patra has been a divisional finance head at Omniactive, and his role as a finance controller across different companies has made him understand the importance of people management in financial results of a company.

Some of his practices revolve around his ability to inspire through his talks.

Strong and effective business excellence leader having almost 12 years of experience in the excellence domain, Mankad currently heads the business excellence vertical at Hafele India Pvt. Ltd, which is a subsidiary of Hafele Group, Germany. Her core competency lies in incorporating process-oriented culture in the organisation through change management, driving continuous improvement projects. Her latest task has been chalking out business transformation plan through digitisation.

Through her practices she is able to optimise customer centricity with employee centricity.

A commerce graduate, Ravi credits his success as a great people manager to his stint at Nexval Infotech, where he learned new dimensions of approachability and humility.

He applies his learning from his seniors and colleagues in his practices very diligently.

A leader with futuristic vision, Rana's thought leadership has led to transformational outcomes for Concentrix India, helping it become one of the fastest-growing companies in the business services industry. His entrepreneurial spirit has helped Concentrix establish and grow presence in key ASEAN economies, among the first global business services company to do so. In his current role, Rana heads India, ASEAN and ANZ with a strong workforce of 62,000+ servicing hundreds of Global Fortune 500 clients across the globe.

He has designed intelligent people practices that help create entrepreneurs out of leaders and managers.

Tandon is a seasoned Human Resources professional with the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) since 2013. He has grown with the organisation and has delivered on special projects of pre-opening new hotels, conducting HR commitment audits, setting up learning and development functions and assisting new HR Leaders in the system.

In his personal time, he is passionate about watching movies and uniquely shares his thoughts in the form of learnings from movies.

Bhansali is an investment banker-turned-entrepreneur who co-founded Gozoop, an independent digital agency with presence in India, New York and the UAE. With an intense passion for the people side of business, he is best known for cultivating a great work environment at Gozoop, Bhansali has also started the 1SmallStep Foundation, a social business incubator. Through 1SmallStep, he invests in and mentors social businesses that solve social problems mainly focussing on child education and employment. His people practices reflect his desire for impact.

A popular name at Cinepolis as a unit head, Sinha is able to maintain lot of on-ground support, awe and love while maintaining approachability.

He designs and executes grand practices that increases his own brand value while ensuring strong people management.

Working in the staffing industry for over 14 years, Shyamsundar knows how professional relationships evolve under well-balanced people management. He believes that people are a company's most important asset–they are what drives business goals and they are the fruit of a company's mission.

He believes his success is a testament to his personal values and the values of the company he works for, Aditi Consulting. The company's key goal is to nurture its people and manage their personal and professional growth to retain the best talent inside the company.

Satish Sundaresan heads Elektrobit's Indian subsidiary, based in Bengaluru. Elektrobrit is a worldwide automotive software leader in the areas of AUTOSAR, Highly Automated Driving, Connected Solutions and Digital Mobility. Elektrobit India is a R&D centre as well as a sales site in India. Sundaresan also heads a global product group focusing on future products in automated driving, analytics and connected solutions including OTA.

Prior to Elektrobit, Sundaresan managed large global programs, whilst leading India-based R&D centres across automotive electronics and IT operations. Some of his people practices are unique and rare, and allow him to connect on a personal and individual level with all his team members.

Sayan Bandyopadhyay is a HR leader who focuses on the motto of creating a high performing and happy team at HDFC Life. Currently responsible for the East of India, Bandyopadhyay deeply believes in the power of happiness and engagement of employees.

He executes practices that can manage geographically scattered HR team intelligently.

Graduated as Electrical Engineer (Electronics and Power), Kalrao is also an accredited Energy Auditor, having 19 years of experience in all spectrums of power distribution business. He is also a technical expert with excellent project execution skills. He is known in the team for his discipline and perfect planning. He is presently heading procurement, stores, meter management and testing.

A computer science graduate, Gupta holds a postgraduate (MBA) degree from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. He joined News Corp Mosaic Digital, India's leading source of financial and investment news and analysis, in February 2018. He is responsible for research, events and training business that assists clients in improving their capabilities in key process areas. A much-sought-after speaker at international forums, Gupta also invests his time in leading innumerable focused group discussions in India. His people practices combine his knowledge with a power of storytelling.

Shantanu Das is the head of HR for Amway and has 23 years+ of experience in the field of HR in areas of IR, compensation, performance etc. After his post-graduation from XLRI Jamshedpur, he started his journey with Philips and worked in many other organizations such as PepsiCo., Sab Miller, Emami etc.

He designs and executes practices that focus on skill development, making that a key focus of his people management style.

Shubha Goel has a rich experience of more than 18 years as a business partner in HR and HR Services. She has strategised and streamlined various HR functionalities like: talent acquisition, employee engagement, succession planning, goal alignment, management reviews, diversity resource reviews, learning needs identification, and designing and implementation of hiring strategies.

At Akshay Patra, an NGO for children in India that runs the world's largest school lunch programme to end child classroom hunger, she has been instrumental in streamlining key HR processes and partnering with all functions to improve stakeholder satisfaction. Her manager practices, such as "Train the Brain", combines recognition with celebration.

Shuchi Nijhawan holds a dual role at Eka where she leads agri-business development globally while managing all human resources functions. Nijhawan is a global leader in providing digital commodity management solutions driven by cloud, blockchain, machine learning and analytics.

She knows how to convert recreational and celebratory activities into moments of learning, through unique practices like her suggestions related to outstation trips.

Shveta Mahajan joined Cushman & Wakefield (legacy DTZ) in 2007 and has nearly 12 years of professional experience in the field of real estate advisory services. In her current role, as a head for North and East India Consulting Services for Cushman & Wakefield India, she is responsible for business development, client management and project implementation for advisory mandates in North and East India.

She deeply understands her team members, even on a personal level, allowing her to be better at managing people. She also designs her practices around such understanding.

Siddhartha Srivastava is a dynamic and business-oriented professional who leads the strategic and operational functions for PNB Housing Finance as a Regional Business Head Greenpark Hub. He is responsible for establishing and providing direction to the bank's and lending program.

He has been instrumental in enhancing the financial institution's growth strategies and generating additional revenue from lending products and services. And he does so by implementing people practices that extract the best out of his team.

Simarneet Wahi is currently employed with HDFC Life, the organisation that has helped her become a better people manager.

"Internal Team Mapping" is a practice designed by her, where she maps each team member with other members. She then uses her understanding of the abilities of her team member to develop everyone by utilising their best abilties. And she executes it in a way that has ensured promotions and growth of most of her team members.

With over 6 years of experience in the staffing industry, Gurung attributes her success as a people manager to the nurturing provided by her organisation, Aditi Consulting. Aditi Consulting is a talent-on-demand and project solutions company.

Gurung has displayed an ability to bring out-of-box thinking in conventional practices, making all her practices a natural development exercise for her team members.

Currently one of the leaders of business development at PSIPL, a Kalpataru Group company, Siripragada focuses on individual attention on his team members and working with them like a friend. He has followed similar strategies since the last 15 years.

He follows the practices of approachability with very strong individual attention on a personal level.

Sriram T has over 12 years of experience in retail real estate and specialises in Built to Suit transactions (BTS) for larger retail occupiers that includes hyper markets, departmental stores and multiplexes. He has concluded more than 0.7 million sft of BTS deals and also overseen the mandate mall leasing business of approximately 2.5 million sft across various markets. At Cushman & Wakefield, a prominent name in commercial real estate services, he is responsible for the retail business vertical.

He likes to come between troubles and his team, thus making him a loved leader amongst his team members.

Sudheer Bandaru started his career as a software engineer solving technical problems and eventually gravitated towards technical management roles at startups with a definite purpose in making a social impact on the world. He was the first employee at the well funded startup Shortlist, a company that is in the list of Top 5 Small Companies with Great People Managers in India.

He has a practice branded "Make my Job Redundant" aimed at developing his team members in unique ways.

Suketu Modi has 18+ years of ICT consulting, enterprise transformation and implementation experience of ICT Infrastructure Networks Infrastructure and Smart Services designing for Smart Cities and Smart Building and Campus Services, Information Security System, Data Center Designing and Operations in the domain of smart city and smart building.

At Smarten, Modi is in charge of enterprise transformation and his practices can teach a lot to people managers managing remote teams.

Currently taking care of two manufacturing plants and two R&D facilities at Omniactive, Takale has a total experience of more than 19 years. He has expertise in the areas of maintenance, project execution and energy conservation.

His practices focus on empowering his team members by utilising his vast domain experience.

Sunil Vishwakarma is currently the lead (captain) of the risk management team at Dream11, a fantasy sports platform in India. Having previously been a Risk lead at PlayGames 24x7, Vishwakarma comes with a lot of experience leading teams that deliver the best experience to internet gaming users. He believes in leading by example and with a team of just 6 members, brings joy to over 5 crore sports fans all over India.

He is able to use skill sets of his high performing team for development of each other.

Having joined Signify as a Sales Officer for North East in the year 2012, Surojit Phukan now manages regional sales in the East for Signify.

His practices around empowerment through decentralisation makes him a good people manager. His team has shown a feeling of being empowered while also feeling extremely connected and inspired by their leader.

A chef entrepreneur and blogger, Chef Goregaonkar is also an Instagram Influencer. At Yellow Tie Hospitality, he oversees kitchen operations of all their food and beverage brands. Some of the brands associated with or owned by Yellow Tie are Dhadoom, Just Falafel, Bombay Blue, Wrapchic, Wok This Way, among others.

He has been able to develop housekeeping staff into chefs. His core people management style is about empowerment and all round development of his staff.

Graduated as an Engineer, Sahu is a Lean Six Sigma expert having over 20 years in vast experience in the field of system and processes, quality and assurance, and internal and system audit. He has worked with various industries across sectors in designing their system and processes (SOPs).

He is a quality and customer service expert at FEDCO with excellent people management skills and focuses on coaching and discipline.

Tejasa Purandare is an entrepreneur from Pune, now considered a specialist in the modular signage industry. Cosign is one of the top 3 Modular Signage manufacturers in the world selling in more than 100 countries. Cosign India, led by Tejasa, is a JV with the Cosign group.

Her practices on celebrations are innovative and all inclusive.

An alumnus of BITS Pilani and FMS Delhi, Chintakindi is currently instrumental in fostering strong relationships with clients and has introduced a lot of initiatives to build client satisfaction and loyalty in a structured manner, at BARC, an organisation that owns and manages a transparent, accurate, and inclusive TV audience measurement system. He has knack of handling multiple projects simultaneously and this reflects in his diverse people practices.

A known name in the world of recruitments, Moningi has been at the forefront of operations of Kelly in India, a staffing company that operates globally.

He merges his passion with his people management practices and thus inspires all his team members to achieve their best. Display of passion and high energy creates the difference.

Vikram Singh Bopche, currently working at Hafele India Pvt. Ltd, is an engineering graduate with management degree and has more than 20 years of experience. He is focussed on the supply chain side of business after having worked in different industries.

He considers people as real strength of any organisation and is passionate about data analytics to drive towards business goals and achieving growth. He is able to create a transparent environment that enhances his impact on his team as a great people manager.

Virendra D Sanghavi is a 76 year old entrepreneur actively managing Aarvi Encon, a company that now employs 3500+ engineers deputed to various oil, gas and solar plants. Under his leadership, the company now has offices at Delhi, Chennai, Baroda, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi.

He creates development and CSR programs keeping in mind the context of the company and is able to inspire most employees of the company towards giving their best. Despite his corporate responsibilities, he is also a visiting faculty and project examiner for final year chemical engineering students at Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai.

Vivek Gupta is a data scientist at Impetus, a big data services, solutions and products company, that aims to use data to transform businesses.

His people practices are a resultant of the strong nurturing by the management of Impetus, helping create great people managers. Managing technology teams across locations is a critical task that Gupta and Impetus seem to achieve successfully.