After spending over three decades in the HR domain, Nihar Ghosh is set to retire from his current role as the CHRO of Emami. Tuhin Biswas, former CHRO of MTR Food, has succeeded Ghosh who is serving his last month at the Company. Having now fully transitioned, Biswas is ready to step into the shoes of Ghosh who will be handing over all his responsibilities to Biswas by end of October.
Ghosh joined Emami as president – HR in 2016 and has spent over five years with the Company leading its HR function for the FMCG business. Having started his corporate journey, in the HR space, in 1990 as executive HR with National Dairy Development Board, Ghosh spent almost two years there. In 1993, Ghosh joined Reliance Industries for almost two years before moving on to Johnson & Johnson (J&J) as a corporate training and development manager, in the year 1995. He ended up spending almost seven years with J&J and served his last position in the Company as a general manager – HR. In his seven-year long stint with J & J, Ghosh also got the opportunity to work abroad in various locations, including Sydney, Australia.
After moving on from J&J, Ghosh spent close to two years with Alghanim Industries, a real-estate firm, as director – HR, working out of Kuwait. The Company now employs over 10,000 employees across 30 countries in the Middle East, Europe and emerging Asia.
Amongst his short stints, Ghosh worked as a chief consultant with Profiles International for a year, and with a company called Human Soft Holding, as VP-HR for less than a year. The Company was into the education sector, with universities and colleges offering executive and other full-time courses.
It was in 2006 that Ghosh joined Spencer’s Retail, as VP-HR and ended up spending his longest stint of 10 years at this RPSG Group company. The last position he served at Spencer’s was that of executive director – HR leading the talent strategy and culture transformation agendas in the retail firm. Post that, he got promoted as executive director – HR, corporate, for the RPSG Group.
Talking to HRKatha about his post-retirement plans, Ghosh says that he would prefer to indulge in some HR advisory work, coaching and teaching.
Biswas, who will be taking over the reins of the HR function at Emami, is a senior HR professional with more than two decades of experience in the domain. Prior to this role, Biswas was leading the HR function at Orkla Group, which is a 12-billion dollar FMCG firm, which owns the MTR Food brand in India, and has a 3000+ strong workforce.
Sharing his thoughts on the new assignment, Biswas says that his job will be to take the people strategy agenda of Emami to a new level. He shares that the FMCG sector is quite competitive and people will need upskilling to stay relevant and competitive in the market and be part of a future-ready workforce.
“Our focus will also be to build a strong EVP and a brand of choice to work for,” says Biswas. He explains that in the FMCG sector, getting the right talent, especially in niche marketing roles, is very important. “Now, we also have digital roles in the marketing functions which require digital skills,” says Biswas.
Biswas comes with work experience in different sectors, such as FMCG, airports, logistics, engineering and manufacturing. Before his association with the Orkla Group, Biswas was the chief people officer at Brinks India, a security and logistics services company.
Other organisations where Biswas has served in key HR leadership positions include TNT, Bangalore International Airport and Tyco.