Godrej has elevated Ruhie Pande as the chief human resource officer, Godrej Housing Finance. Prior to this, Pande was serving as the CHRO of Godrej Properties, which is the Group’s real- estate business. Pande comes with more than 20 years of total experience having successfully held various roles in HR in many prestigious companies across the FMCG, IT, retail and real- estate sectors.
Pande did not begin her career in the HR function. It was in 2000 that she left Mahindra and Mahindra as a client-servicing manager to join ITC as a training manager for its distribution and retail function. Though Pande did her bachelor’s in catering and nutrition from the Institute of Hotel Management, Lucknow, after entering the HR sphere she completed a PGDM in HR and IR from the Symbiosis Institute of Learning and Development.
After working with ITC for six years, Pande moved to NIIT where she served as the divisional manager-HR. She handled the talent-management function for the Institute’s knowledge solution business, that is, about a 1000 IT professionals.
Then she moved to Reliance Brands, which is the luxury and premium retailing arm of Reliance Retail. There headed human resources and was responsible for formulating and implementing the HR strategy.
After spending over a year at Reliance Retail, Pande moved to Kaya, a healthcare and beauty solutions company, which was formerly started under Marico. There, she worked closely with the CEO and was responsible for the entire Group’s HR strategy. The Company operated in India, Malaysia, Singapore and the Middle East. After Kaya demerged from Marico in 2013, Pande moved to the role of VP-HR and training at Kaya, going on to lead the team of HR and training professionals to formulate HR strategies. The Company then had an employee base of more than 1500.
Having completed her master of science in industrial and organisational psychology from Birkbeck, University of London, Pande is also a professionally-certified coach.