Deepak Somasundaram spent nearly 15 years at a cement company. His new employer also runs schools.
On 29 September, he took over as chief human resources officer of Chettinad Group. Cement is one of its businesses, but far from the only one. The group also operates across logistics and transportation, construction and infrastructure, real estate, semiconductor materials, textiles, plantations and agriculture, healthcare and education. It is a considerably more varied business landscape than the one from which Somasundaram arrives.
He comes from Dalmia Bharat, which he joined in February 2012. His last role there was assistant executive director – HR at Dalmia Cement. Over the years, his work spanned talent management, organisation development, learning and development, performance management, compensation and benefits, HR analytics and HR operations. He worked across corporate, regional, unit and plant levels, giving him experience of how HR operates both at headquarters and closer to the factory floor.
The new assignment broadens that canvas. A cement plant, a hospital and an educational institution operate with very different workforces, skills and employment contexts. Somasundaram now moves from an HR career shaped largely by one industrial sector into the people leadership of a group spread across several of them.
His career did not begin in cement. Before Dalmia Bharat, Somasundaram spent more than six years with Aircel Cellular, joining the telecom company in 2006 as deputy manager – corporate HR.
Nor did he originally train for HR. Somasundaram graduated in mechanical engineering from Kongu Engineering College in 2003 before completing an MBA in HR from PSG Institute of Management in 2005. His HR career now spans more than 21 years.
Chettinad Group has been in business since 1912. Somasundaram joins it 114 years later, with the task of taking his HR experience into a much broader mix of businesses.
