E-commerce in India: 40 Leaders Redefining HR

eCommerce technology is transforming the way people work, it is showcasing a huge impact on how companies manage their human resource operations. When it comes to hiring, retention and recognition practices, the role of HR leaders in the E-commerce sector is best summarised in terms of agility. Our team at peopleHum is excited to announce and celebrate the 40 names in the E-commerce industry who lead as value-driven HRs, including the many others whose efforts we recognise and appreciate.

Disclaimer: The list is purely subjective and is created on the basis of relevant experience and the contribution of the selected professionals to the field of human resources. If you have any suggestions or recommendations of other names who deserve to be a part of the list, please reach out to us and nominate your choice.

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40 HR Leaders in the Indian E-commerce Industry

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Daminee Sawhney

Daminee Sawhney is the Vice President, Human Resources and Operations at Zomato. She has recently celebrated 11 years of her service to the firm as its VP of HR and Operations. She holds a Bachelor in Business Administration, Human Resource Management from Amity University and also a Masters in International Employment Relations & Human Resource Management from the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE).

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Hari T. N

Hari T.N is the Head of HR at Big Basket for over 7 years. He is an Investor at Angel, Advisor to Akram Ventures, Mentor at Start-up Accelerators, Sounding Board to founders and startups, and a Columnist. He has also co-authored six novels, one of which is titled as From Pony to Unicorn, Penguin. Hari has been on the management teams of several start-ups and scale-ups and has also been a member of five successful exits in various industries, including a NASDAQ IPO.

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Krishna Raghavan

Krishna Raghavan is the Chief People Officer at Flipkart. He holds over a decade of experience with eCommerce apps, SaaS delivery models, product startups, and enterprise solutions. Krishna is extremely adept at leading global, cross-functional teams and those geographically diversified. He is also known to establish outstanding engineering organisations from the ground up, utilising long-term strategic vision, towards hiring, people management and organisational planning.

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Meenakshi Priyam

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Meenakshi Priyam is the Group CHRO at udaan. She holds experience as a global HR leader having worked across different sectors and geographies such as India, Asia-Pacific and Europe. She previously worked as a CHRO India & Global Head CEP at GSK and Head HR (GPS&C) at Novartis. She has also held the position of Regional HR Director APAC at Johnson & Johnson, where she served the firm for over 7 years in different roles.

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Manish Wadhwa

Manish Wadhwa is the Chief People Officer, India & SEA at CarDekho. Known for his ‘People First’ approach, he has worked in a variety of industries including telecom, banking, consumer technology and have managed a variety of functions like sales, marketing, technology, operations. He is a seasoned executive who combines business knowledge, human capital management, stakeholder/relationship management, while also directing large teams.

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Ashish Kumar Singh

Ashish Kumar Singh is the Chief HR Officer at Meesho, an online shopping site for fashion, electronics, home appliancies, etc. He was previously the Chief HR Officer at Medlife and also the VP - HR at Myntra. Ashish has been involved in the development of excellent people practises in technology-driven startups. His areas of interest include HR strategies, leadership, culture, and organisational growth.

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Sneha Arora

Sneha Arora is the Vice President of Human Resources at Myntra and is a part of the leadership team, focused on building a people-first culture at the firm. She has previously worked as a Director of HR at SAP, and also as an HR manager at Flipkart and Texas Instruments. Sneha also holds a Master’s in Human Resources from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

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Deepak Kumar Das

Deepak Kumar Das is the Director - HR COE at Swiggy. He has an HR specialist with expertise in areas such as performance management, career management, employee engagement, leadership development, and change management programmes. He is also known to collaborate with business executives in identifying concerns/potential issues and devising and deploying solutions at the organisational level or tailored to a specific business unit as needed.

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Surender Mehta

Surender Mehta is the Group CHRO at Nykaa and was previously the HR Director - VOIS India & Gold Head of HR - VOIS Business at Vodafone, serving the firm for over 19 years. He is a seasoned HR expert with more than 20 years of experience who has effectively led and executed strategic, specialist, and generalist HR responsibilities from blue-chip firms, multinational to small companies. He is passionate about fostering culture, inclusion, and talent vitality.

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Saurabh Grewal

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Saurabh Grewal is the Deputy Manager - Talent Acquisition at Grofers. He holds over 7.5 years of expertise managing the whole spectrum of talent acquisition duties, including end-to-end recruitment, headhunting, and volume-based hiring. He is a seasoned HR executive who is experienced in manpower management, orientation, onboarding, and is also adept at managing individual data and finances in an HRMS system.

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Sana Nayyar

Sana Nayyar is the Vice President - People Partner at Urban Company. Previously as a former VP - HR to the firm, her primary KRA was to identify and deliver on the organization's people priorities like recruitment, people operations, business partnering, people development and workplace infrastructure. In the past, she has worked for the Supreme Group in Dubai as the HR Officer. Sana has also earned a master's degree in International Employment Relations & Human Resource Management.

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Aditi Pareek

Aditi Pareek is the Head of Human Resources at Pepperfry. She is currently an HR generalist with over 15 years of experience in mid-sized and startup organisations in talent acquisition, talent engagement, administration, organizational development, and people operations. Aditi is also known to assist in the development and implementation of people processes and contribute to the firm’s people strategy.

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Sachin Agrawal

Sachin Agrawal is the HR Head, Ajio Business at Reliance Retail. He oversees the complete HR function from the ground up, developing global HR policies and processes (across the US, UK, and SEA), implementing HRIS, and creating the recruitment strategy and employer brand. He is passionate about developing high-performing field sales forces, board evaluation processes, ESOP schemes, compensation exercises, company restructuring, and building teams on digital platforms.

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Yuvaraj Srivastava

Yuvaraj Srivastava is the Group Chief Human Resource Officer at MakeMyTrip. He has 23 years of experience as an HR professional and 5.5 years of experience as a commissioned officer in the Indian Armed Forces. He has worked in HR in a variety of businesses, including manufacturing, supply chain, hospitality, sales, and technology. He manages three well-known online travel brands: MakeMyTrip, GoIbibo, and RedBus, and is in charge of their overall HR strategy, execution, and business support.

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Pravin Kutty

Pravin Kutty is the Vice President & Head, Human Resources at Snapdeal. He is responsible for overseeing the whole HR environment and the workplace administration. Pravin holds 20+ years of strategy and execution experience in the areas of people, culture, and human resources. He has also established the HR systems, operations, and analytics verticals, overseeing significant change management projects, including business and organisational restructuring exercises.

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Varun Tandon

Varun Tandon is the Head - Performance & Rewards and HRBP Lead at Dunzo. He oversees the PEDA functions for the team and assists the people team in goal management while focusing on the areas of employee experience. Prior to this, he has worked as a Senior Manager - Human Resources for the Go-MMT Group (MakeMyTrip, Ibibo, and Redbus) (Performance, Rewards, Automation & Analytics Lead).

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Roma Bindroo

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Roman Bindroo is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Zepto. She is passionate about the concepts of organizational effectiveness, talent direction, employee experience and innovation. She also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in PMIR, Human Resource Management from XRLI Jamshedpur. Roma was previously the HR leader, Global Functions and Enterprise HR projects at Johnson & Johnson, India and has also led the people agenda with global teams as well as diversity and inclusion.

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Ashish Banka

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Ashish Banka is the Director - TA & HR Ops at Delhivery. He is an HR Executive with 14 years of experience specialising in talent acquisition, performance management, and employee engagement. Ashish is known to manage approximately 4000 on-roll and 12000 off-roll employees, as well as head a team of 45 HR specialists. He is also the founder and National President for HR SAMPARK, a Non-Profit Trust focused on HR Conclaves, Knowledge Sharing, Industry-Academia Events, and CSR Actions.

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Ekta Vashishth

Ekta Vashishth is the Manager - Talent Acquisition at ShopClues. She holds hands-on experience in end-to-end recruitment. She is known to have developed sourcing tactics using low-cost methods like social media, market research, and headhunting. Her role also involves identifying future workforce requirements and recruiting and finding candidates ahead of time. She believes that the contribution of everyone in an organization is crucial for best results.

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Swapnika Nag

Swapnika Nag is the Chief People Officer at Tata CLIiq. She previously worked as an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company and also led multiple sales and growth strategy projects. She has earned an Integrated Masters Degree (IMD) in Engineering/Applied Physics and later pursued Post Graduate Diploma in Management at the Indian Institute of Management Banglore.

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Ajay Sreedhara

Ajay Sreedhara is the Global Head People Function at ClearTrip. He plays the role of an HR leader and advises on people, change and cultural management issues. Ajay is known to be in charge of developing and implementing human resources initiatives to enhance the firm’s high performance and productivity. He was previously a Manager of HR Business Partner at Flipkart and Manager of Human Resources and HCL Technologies Ltd.

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Amey Joshi

Amey Joshi is the Vice President of Human Resources at PharmEasy. He is a seasoned HR executive with experience in a variety of companies and areas such as technology, healthcare, business process services, oil and gas. Some areas of his specialities include HR transformation, organization & culture building, total rewards, performance management and HR compliance. He was a member of HR teams such as EXL Service, Xerox, Sun Pharma and has driven HR transformation programmes.

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Rishu Garg

Rishu Garg is the Chief People Officer at Ziwame. She was previously the CHRO at RIVIGO and also headed G4S as the Vice President and Head of HR. With over 15 years of experience in the HR field, her areas of competencies include organizational design, HR technology, recruitment, compensation, performance management and employee engagement. She also holds a Master in Business Administration, HR, Marketing, Finance & Research from Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource Development.

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Benjamin Rajkumar

Benjamin Rajkumar is the Head of Human Resources at CaratLane - A Tanishq Partnership. He previously worked as a Lead HR Business Partner, Corporate at Titan Company Limited where he served the firm for 11 years.

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Shamita Ghosh

Shamita Ghosh is the Associate Vice President of Human Resources at BookMyShow. She is an HR leader with over 10 years of experience in building and implementing HR strategies. Her areas of competencies are performance management, talent acquisition, manpower planning, employee engagement and retention. She holds a Masters in HRM & Industrial Relations from Alliance Manchester Business School.

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Rekha Raghavan

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Rekha Raghavan is the Vice President of Human Resources at FreshToHome Foods Private Ltd.  She is a passionate HR executive whose core focus lies in people development and talent acquisition. She has worked as an HR generalist in the manufacturing industry for over 16+ years. Rekha is also known to be a certified Meta-NLP practitioner and coach. She has handled various facets of HR functions like resource planning, talent management, HRIS systems, employee engagement, diversity and culture-building.

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Priyadarshini Suvarna

Priyadarshini Suvarna is the Associate Director of Talent Acquisition at Licious. She holds a Post Graduate Diploma, PGDBA - Human Resources from Welingkar Institute of Management. She is a seasoned HR professional with experience in various facets of HRM.

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Sarika Puri

Sarika Puri is the AVP Talent Acquisition at BYJU. She has more than 12 years of expertise in mid-level to senior-level hiring. Sarika is known to be a recruiting expert with a diverse background in both agency and corporate full-cycle recruitment for established brands and start-ups. She previously worked as an HR consultant at Water & Stone, and also the Manager, Leadership Hiring at Lenskart.

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Preeti Kaul

Preeti Kaul is the People & Culture Head at upGrad. She previously worked as a Talent & Leadership Development Leader APAC, HR leaders for Technology Business at UnitedHealth Group. She is a seasoned Human Resources expert with a track record of working with international teams. She also has a solid understanding of commercial partnerships and has guided large-scale people and organisational transformations.

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Sidharth Gupta

Sidharth Gupta is the Associate Vice President of HR at IndiaMART InterMESH Limited. He previously worked as a Senior HR Manager at Samsung Electronics for over 7 years. Sidharth holds Masters in Business Administration, Human Resources from International Management Institute (IMI). He believes in leadership that is driven by performance and empathy.

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Manjula Rao

Manjula Rao is the Vice President and Head of Human Resources at Firstcry. She is a seasoned HR executive with over 20 years of experience in strategic, transactional and transformational HR in the E-commerce, manufacturing as well as publication and health and service industries. Her core expertise lies in the areas of talent management, recruitment, HRMS & reporting, compensation, performance management, employee retention, talent engagement and much more.

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Satish S

Satish S is the Talent Acquisition Leader where he heads the departments of technology, product and design functions at Lenskart. He previously worked as a Senior Manager (Digital) at CareerNet Consulting. He has worked for a diverse set of companies, ranging from Fortune 500 organisations to new-age startups (Digital), eCommerce, FMCG, Retail, new age media, large and mid-sized services companies across India.

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Pooja Dudani

Pooja Dudani is the Director - HR (L&OD, Talent Management, Leadership Development, Diversity) at CARS24. Her core expertise lies in the key areas of talent management, learning and development, organizational growth and digitization. She is also passionate about crafting organizational purpose and values and driving mindsets, behaviours and processes.

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Richa Kaur

Richa Kaur is the Head of HR at FRAAZO. She is a startup HR specialist with a focus on strategic HRM and strongly believes that HR is more than a support function. Richa specialises in designing and driving performance management systems, employee branding, engagement activities and programs for onboarding, retention and skill-building. She also oversees HR policies and practices as well as talent acquisition.

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Sankarjyoti Kakoty

Sankarjyoti Kakoty is the Director - HR at Tata 1mg. He is experienced as a Human Resources Business Partner with a track record of success in the telecoms and industrial industries. His areas of competencies include ER, engagement, recruiting, performance management, HR policies, union management, LTS and compliance. He has previously worked for Flipkart, Vodafone, Marico Limited, The Coca-Cola Company and Hindustan Unilever Ltd.

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Prabhanjan Kulkarni

Prabhanjan Kulkarni is the Vice President & Head of HR at redBus. He is passionate about aiding business leaders in achieving organisational goals by business partnering and coaching and development.

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Alok Shukla

Alok Shukla is the Vice President of Human Resources at Cashify. He holds over 14 years of leadership experience and specialises in the areas of change management, process re-engineering, culture and talent development, talent acquisition, compensation, PMS, L&D, employee relations and engagement.

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Akash Chauhan

Akash Chauhan is the Vice President - Head of HR, Last-Mile Delivery Operation and Customer Succes at Urban Ladder. He previously worked as a talent acquisition executive and leader for Infosys BPO. Akash also holds a PGDM, Human Resource from International Management Institute - IMI.

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Philip Joshua Assey

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Philip Joshua Assey is the Head of HR at NetMeds. He is an experienced HR exceutive with over13 years in conceiving, executing, and managing HR strategies, workplace culture, employee experience, organisation change & transformation/ As a talent architect and people person, Ajay is passionate about organizational and people growth and believes in creating the workplaces of tomorrow. He is also known to create award-winning practices in talent management.

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Pooja Hooda

Pooja Hooda is the Senior Manager of HR at Jabong. She has previously worked as a Manager of Human Capital at PwC India where she oversaw employee relations, performance management, reward and recognition, compensation and benefits administration and employee engagement. She also worked as an Assistant Manager of Human Resources at Tata Consultancy Services.

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