Booker T. Washington once said “Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” And the Carnival Group has been following this maxim and doing things exactly that way. The company’s evolution and growth journey have become an epitome of brilliance and success.

The journey of Carnival Group started off with a group of professionals coming together with a purpose of not only creating wealth, but also adding value to the society. They started off with Advantage Overseas Pvt. Ltd. in the year 2007 and managed the export of agri products. It took 6 months of persistent hard work to clinch the first deal, but at the end of the first year, the turnaround was over Rs. 1000 crores. It was then that the group thought of diversification, of learning and exploring something new and interesting. And this is when the group decided to delve into the business of film production. Accomplishment of one goal led to the formation of another and Carnival Cinemas got into the business of distribution and exhibition of cinemas. Starting off with a mere three-screen multiplex in 2012, they decided upon a mutual goal to own 300 screens by the end of 2018. But their agility and a tactical mind-set enabled them to realize this goal way before their projection, in the year 2014 itself. To plot its expansion, Carnival took a strategic shortcut — three acquisitions in less than a year which led them to buy out the multiplex business of Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd. (HDIL), the multiplex operator Big Cinemas, and Glitz Cinemas. This in turn gave them an impetus to venture into the foray of realty. They bought InfoParks at Cochin and Trivandrum and their third acquisition in realty was the Elante Mall, the largest in Chandigarh, for a whopping Rs 1,785 crore. In the year 2014, Carnival Group acquired Metro Vaartha — a Malayalam newspaper. Today, the Carnival Group is prospering in the realms of agri product manufacturing and trading, event management, movie production and exhibition, newspapers and realty.

With such rampant restricting and acquisitions, the challenges and convolutions related to work culture incompatibility, different leadership styles, changes in compensation, and lay-offs come up, all of which affect the effectiveness of the organization. To handle such challenges and steer the organization forward, the role of the CHRO becomes crucial. 

Mr. Prasanth Narayanan, CHRO and Founder Director of the Carnival Group has always been at the helm of Carnival Group’s growth journey. His expertise in change management, global human resources strategy, employer branding and leadership capability development has been instrumental in cultivating the human resources of the Group, and has resulted in maximum effective and productive human interaction to the organization’s benefit. He has also successfully implemented various strategic HR interventions which have aligned the business objectives together, that have ultimately resulting in enhanced profitability of the organization. According to Mr. Narayanan, “the key to managing cultural differences lies in ‘Patience’ and an organization needs to have lots of patience and trust in the people, enough to let them adjust to the new culture and exhibit their talent and performance.”

HRO Today has recently recognized Mr. Narayanan as “CHRO of the Year – Sustainable Workforce 2017 Asia Pacific”.