Santana Ramakrishnan has been appointed as the new CHRO at DealShare, a hyperlocal e-commerce buying platform for various consumer products. In this assignment, Ramakrishnan will play a crucial role of implementing the Company’s people strategy, building capability for expansion, ensuring profitability and enabling culture frameworks that will make DealShare as an employer of choice.
Prior to this, Ramakrishinan was leading HR at Udaan.com for its credit and capital business, for over two years. Udaan is also an e-commerce platform, which caters to the B2B community in India.
Ramakrishnan carries more than two decades of experience in the HR domain and has worked in various sectors. After obtaining a postgraduate diploma in personnel management and industrial relations from XLRI, Ramakrishnan honed her skills in various HR roles working with companies such as GE Capital and Genpact.
In 2007, Ramakrishnan took up the role of head of HR for the South region at AXA, a global insurance company. She spent more than seven years with the Company working in various business partnering roles and climbed the corporate ladder. Her last role at AXA was as the head of HR for distribution, where she partnered with CXOs to drive leadership development, succession planning and employee relations in the company.
In 2014, Ramakrishnan joined Goldman Sachs as the head, business partner solutions. There too, Ramakrishnan saw success and went up the corporate ladder witnessing two promotions. Her last position at the company was as global head, HR operations and solutions.
At DealShare, Ramakrishnan will report to Vineet Rao, founder and CEO, DealShare.
Rao, who is glad to have Ramakrishnan joining when “DealShare is at an exciting inflection point” and “rapidly scaling our business, expanding into new markets, enhancing the e-commerce experience for Bharat’s consumers, and empowering local communities and manufacturers”.
According to Rao, “Hiring the right talent and engaging them effectively will play a crucial role in this journey. In the coming year, our talent pool will grow exponentially” and Ramakrishnan’s “diverse experience spanning geographies and her remarkable leadership experiences will help us scale our business agenda further while crafting a meaningful employee experience”.
Ramakrishnan admits that “The scale and scope of the yet-to-be-tapped market presents us with a unique opportunity to build a retail-relevant ecosystem. The commitment of the founders and the leadership team to prioritising profitability as a key metric to our success, while balancing growth is central to the performance culture that we aim to ingrain”.
She realises that “augmenting the HR function to both enable the business and build a credible employee value proposition is more important than ever” and is therefore looking forward to “working alongside the leadership team to contribute to the larger vision of the company and being a part of this journey”.
