Rajesh Padmanabhan, Director, Group CHRO of Welspun Group has stepped down after four years of stint with the company.  The industry veteran is taking the entrepreneurial route after working with Welspun for more than four years. Talking to People Matters he shared that it has been a fascinating 3 decades plus of corporate experience in 6 different domains of BFSI, Manufacturing, Hospitality, IT Services, Consulting and Conglomerate and in 6 functions of Systems & ERP, Banking, Strategy & Planning, Running P&L, Consulting & Global HR. 

Padmanabhan said, “Every stint has been fascinating in my profile build-up of this 6 by 6 matrix and industry has given me a lot of skills, knowledge, and experience. I will give this back to the industry in my second innings as Solutions, Tools, and Digital frameworks and am sketching out the details.” 

He added that Covidisation has changed the world 180’ and the people transformation story is a big one at Governance, Industry, and at Retail level. A lot of well-wishers, supporters, believers, industrialists, PE firms, Search folks, Consulting firms, and startup teams are reaching out to me. It is a pretty opportune time to look at it from a different lens.There is a new world out there to be created and my deep experience of business, digital and people will enable this transformation.

A double Masters in both HR and Finance from Mumbai University, Padmanabhan started his career with the ICICI group handling systems on mainframes and later on became the corporate banker. In 1997, he shifted to HR and managed HR start-ups within the group. By 1999, he became the Vice President, HR, at ICICI Infotech. His skills to converge HR and business got a boost in his role in Essel Propack where he was the first HR persons in India to globalize HR & took it to geographies like the US, Latin America, the UK, Germany, Egypt, China, South East Asia, Russia & Nepal. 

In his long career, he has worked with companies such as Vedanta Resources, Capgemini and Oberoi Group.