101 Most Fabulous HR Tech Leaders Award - I owe it to my career influencers!

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it" - William Arthur Ward

Having received "Global HR Excellence “Exemplary Leader Award” at the Asia Pacific HRM Congress’ 2010, bestowed with  "100 HR Super Achievers" in India by WHRD Congress 2018, 'Top HR Influencer & Author" by IHRC in 2019 for contribution in HR Arena, it feels amazing to be now counted amongst "101 Most Fabulous HR Tech Leaders" bestowed by World HRD Congress in association with ET Now on 15th Feb-2020 at Hotel Taj Land End Bandra, Mumbai in a ceremony where more than 1000 delegates from 130+ Countries participated.

Getting Industry recognition is not only a privilege, however, also an opportunity to express gratitude to various leaders, colleagues and friends who have contributed immensely in unlocking your potential and shaping your career. 

Here is the list of my Leaders without whom I won't be there where I am today! 

I can't thank them enough ever!  Making an effort to pay forward by sharing my learnings & nurturing talent...

Vineet Sharma for instilling confidence in me, showing me through his deeds what Leadership is all about which helped me not only build a solid career foundation, however, also helped in my becoming a fine human being. 

Lex Hoekstra taught me what it means when we say "Respect for Individual" and how tough guys get going when it get tough.

Joan Amble taught me art of appreciation, coaching & guiding people to achieve their potential. 

Srikant Karra for giving me my first break in HR post ops stint and helped me excel in the art of HR transactional spectrum which was a pre-requisite to build a solid HR foundation.

Atul Chugh emphasis and push on developing team members "Lift them and they will lift you", was crucial in helping me develop career facilitation & coaching skills.

Saurabh Govil for  giving me a chance to work in HRBP role & showing confidence that a successful HR shared services Employee can be a fine Mainstream HR too!

Rohit Bhayana for kicking me hard to develop Business Acumen, Change Management and cultural transformation skills.

Biplab Adhya for Perceived Connotation - Always see it from other point of view. Best of intention can go wrong if you don't. 

Pratap G for Executive Suaveness, HR strategy, different strokes for different folks and Empowerment

Piyush Mehta for relationship building and how to navigate  through organizational interpersonal dynamics.

Vivek Gour for guiding me in his own inimitable style at crucial career juncture and telling me the skills that I need to build to rub shoulder with big daddies and also highlighting potential risks.

Ashish Khera : Operational Excellence & bias for action.

Sriharsha Achar for empowerment and creating engaging and happy workplaces.

Nipun Bhatia for pushing me to go beyond normal work approaches and build industry connect & credentials. 

Ranjan Bandyopadhyay for helping me evolve and add significantly to my experiential learning's and providing guidance and support at every critical juncture while exposing me to different facets of HR with scale and complexities including cultural sensitivity exposure through an international stint.

Nupur Mallick helped me learn how to adapt to shifting dynamics, significance of working on unconscious bias while giving me an opportunity to interface with Lynda Gratton who really made me sit up and think about future of HR & HR practices. 

Pramod Bhasin, Tiger" NV Tyagarajan, Afzal Modak, Abidali Neemuchwala, Dinanath Kholkar, VK Raman, N Sarma, Milind Dhuru, Bawa Grover, Anupam Singhal, Eleni Nicholas are some of Leaders that I have looked up to who has directly / indirectly helped in shaping my thought leadership.

There are people in our HR Industry who have implicit influence on me since my young age include Dr Aquil Busrai, Santrupt Misra, R Gopalakrishnan, Bimal Rath, Anand Pillai, Dr. G P Rao, Varadarajan S, Prabir Jha and Marshall Goldsmith - a chance 1 on 1 meeting many years back due to flight delay helped build lot of perspective.  

Also thanks to Talees Rizvi, Sundeep Chandra, Ester Martinez and RL Bhatia and many others in industry & Academia for helping me add to my experiential learning's through multiple industry interface.  

Thank you everyone and I express my gratitude to all of you for directly / indirectly shaping me through my career journey so far!   

In Gratitude, Raj