Headline

Talent & People Strategy @ Vahan | Builder and Operator | ex Amazon, Samsung, Directi, Future Group

About

I am a people leader with 15 years of experience across talent acquisition, performance management, and organisational culture. Over this time, I have built people functions from the ground up across early stage startups (Series A/B), while also carrying enterprise-grade hiring rigor from Amazon and Samsung. This has given me fluency in both structured process-heavy environments, and ambiguous 0-to-1 builds. I run HR like a product function - sharp prioritization, outcomes over activity, and staying close enough to the user (employees) to know what's actually broken.

Location

Greater Bengaluru Area

Work experience

Senior Manager, Talent & People Strategy at Vahan.ai, Nov 2024 - Present · 1 yr 11 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Head, Talent Acquisition at CoffeeBeans, May 2023 - Sep 2024 · 1 yr 5 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, CoffeeBeans was messy in a different way. Multiple clients, different expectations, and hiring quality depended too much on who was handling the role. The goal was simple: make hiring less random. Two things worked: Used ChatGPT to create a basic evaluation layer — consistent feedback across all interviewers Built the KIT program so candidates didn't disappear after offer That improved offer-to-joining by ~15%. Nothing groundbreaking. Just fixing obvious leaks in the system.

Associate Vice President, Human Resources at CloudSEK, Dec 2021 - Nov 2022 · 1 yr, Greater Bengaluru Area, I joined CloudSEK right after their Series A. They needed to scale quickly but didn't have the systems to support it. Small team, high expectations. We focused on getting the basics right: Set up Greenhouse Cleaned up how decisions were being made Worked closely with founders on critical hires A couple of months in, the HR lead moved out — so I ended up running the People function as well. Performance cycles, policy clean-up, employee lifecycle management. We went from 80 to 150 in ~11 months, and managed to keep engagement high (eNPS 91).

Manager, Talent Acquisition at Samsung Electronics, Apr 2020 - Dec 2021 · 1 yr 9 mos, India, On paper, campus hiring looked fine. In reality, people doing the same work were being paid differently based on their college — IIT vs non-IIT. That didn't sit right, and it was showing up as early attrition. We dug in, spoke to people, and built OROC (One Role One Compensation): Same role, same pay Skill mattered more than pedigree Simple change, but it shifted how hiring decisions were made. We also had to deal with COVID. Move everything remote. Still onboarded ~600 hires. No additional budget.

Talent Acquisition Manager at Tathastu, Jul 2019 - Dec 2019 · 6 mos, Greater Bengaluru Area, I was brought in by my mentor to run the Bangalore office. Tathastu was Future Group's tech arm — their vision to take offline retail businesses into D2C and e-commerce models. Future Group was known for a strong, distinct culture — designed by Devdutt Patnaik (Chief Belief Officer). I joined as the founding member of the HR team. The challenge wasn't just hiring — it was building an organisation with its own identity, culturally independent of Future Group. Designed policies distinctly for Tathastu, not Future Group Built Parichay — the first org-wide immersion program Owned end-to-end hiring from day one A pure 0→1 journey. Unfortunately, Future Group's financials drove to the ground and we had to shut down. Short chapter but immense learning.

Education

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science, Wilson College Chowpatty Mumbai 400 007