Pooled Resources

More conglomerates are tapping leading business schools to build their corporate leadership development programmes, and groom young talent.

- E. Kumar Sharma

RITESH KHANDELWAL was just 27 when he joined Siemens as a senior associate. In just two years, he was made the finance head of a major business segment of the company, and in 2016, he became the CFO, Mobility Business, a key business area for the company which contributes 10-12 per cent of the total Siemens revenues in India and is involved in some high profile projects such as state-owned metro networks and railways.

A major factor that fast-tracked Khandelwal’s career was his induction in the Siemens finance excellence programme – a talent pool within the company to groom potential CFOs. Khandelwal was taken in from the University of Chicago, where he did his MBA. Palpably excited at the boost the programme has given to his career, he says, “It is a structured programme and there is focused career development with high visibility with the top management, who evaluate the performance closely and also give career advice.”

The company has increased business school campus recruitment. “We recruit almost 2,000 people every year in the whole of Siemens in India, of which 25-30 are from business schools. Five years ago, we hardly recruited anybody from business schools,” says S. Ramesh Shankar, Executive Vice President and Head of HR, Siemens India.