Essar Group’s Rahul Taneja joins Jet Airways as chief people officer

Taneja has diverse experience in engineering, sales and marketing, and also human resources.

Rahul Taneja has joined Jet Airways as chief people officer, having moved from Essar Group, where he was senior vice-president & head, corporate HR.

At Jet Airways, Taneja, 47, will be responsible for shaping the operations and performance of the Group.

He will join the executive management committee that has been tasked by the board of directors of Jet Airways, to drive the company’s growth and future strategy.

Naresh Goyal, chairman, Jet Airways, says in an official communiqué, “Taneja brings with him a global HR management perspective, and I am sure Jet Airways will benefit substantially from his expertise and experience locally and internationally.”

Taneja says, “As the company moves to its next phase of evolution, we will support this through effective channelling of our human capital to further enhance the guest experience and meet the organisation’s growth objectives.”

Currently, Jet Airways operates flights to 73 destinations, including 51 in India and 22 across the world.

Taneja has quite a diverse profile and all-round experience in his career span of 26 years. He started as an engineer, and then moved to sales and marketing, and finally after 10 years, to human resources.

A mechanical engineer from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, he started his career with Mahindra & Mahindra as trainee engineer in 1990.

In the three years that he spent with the company he rose to the level of marketing engineer, where he was responsible for the sales of two third of the state of Haryana, for the company’s tractor and farm equipment business.

His next job was also in sales and marketing when he joined the earthmovers company, JCB, as area manager for Madhya Pradesh. During his stint at JCB, Taneja also completed his PGDM in business management from the Xavier’s Institute of Management.

In 2000, he made a transition to HR when he joined Consindia, now CHR Global, an executive search and selection firm.

Three years later, he moved to Hindustan Futuristic Communications (HFCL), the telecom equipment manufacturer, as group head-HR.

At Essar, where Taneja spent over eight years, he was a member of the group’s global leadership team. Here, he worked extensively with the CEOs and the regional directors of the group companies. As the head of corporate HR, he has also worked with the functional leaders to develop their annual business plans and cascade it thereafter.

Prior to Essar, Taneja worked with Dell for close to two years. Though he joined as director-talent acquisition, he was named director- HR after a year or so.