Rajesh Padmanabhan is with Welspun Group - A 2.3 billion dollar business conglomerate having presence in pipes, plates, coils, steel, infrastructure and home textiles sector— as Director and Group CHRO. He is a member of the Group Council.

Prior to this, Rajesh was President and Group CHRO, Vedanta. Rajesh, who has post graduated in HR as well as finance, from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, started his career with the ICICI group, handling systems on mainframes, and went on to become a corporate banker for wholesale banking.

In 1997, he took the big plunge into HR and managed HR start-ups within the group. In 1999, he was elevated as vice president-HR, at ICICI Infotech, where he drove the convergence of business and HR.

At Essel Propack, his next destination, he drove global HR. He was one of the early movers in India to globalise HR and managed to take it to locations, such as the US, Latin America, UK, Germany, Egypt, China, South East Asia, Russia and Nepal.

In 2004, he took over as EVP - Group HR & Head – (OCLD), at the Oberoi group. There, he ensured the holistic convergence of leadership development and skill building, for creation of business value and operational excellence.

From The Oberoi Group, he moved to Patni Computer Services as Global Management Board member in the role of EVP & CHRO. In the three years that he spent there, he created customer–centric global HR models across geographies with learning skills. He helped build frameworks and run complex yet efficient structures for creation of customer and enterprise value.

Between 2010 and 2014, he worked with Capgemini, as Group Corporate Vice President & CHRO. He was responsible for scaling up size in India and ramped upto over 54000 people by June 2014. He drove considerable people synergies across businesses and established new centres of expertise and global shared services out of India. He won the prestigious UN Award for building diversity and inclusive practice in Capgemini.

In Vedanta Resources, he created the platform for enabling businesses with cost-effective strategies and effective global leadership. He ensured growth of the people with a clear vision, capability development and high engagement levels across the group.

At Welspun, he focusses on culture building across the group, leadership effectiveness and help create people processes and excellence. He drives people excellence through centres of expertise and business embedded HR and uses digital and innovative practices to create a new age HR function.