He was the director HR/ global HR business partner for Philips Mobile Surgery business, before joining Cargill Business Services
Cargill’s global multi-function shared services hub providing services across multiple business functions and processes, Cargill Business Services has just got in its new HR lead. Raj Karunakaran, joined the firm as the global HR lead, early this month and is now based out of Bangalore. Karunakaran was the director HR/ global HR business partner for Philips Mobile Surgery business, before joining Cargill Business Services.
According to his LinkedIn profile, as a member of the Cargill Business Services leadership team, he will take direct accountability for translating business strategies and challenges into human capital strategies, plans, HR actions across six global strategic locations at Bangalore (India), San Jose (Costa Rica), Uberlandia (Brazil), Nanjing (China), Sofia (Bulgaria), Rosario (Argentina), Gurugram (India).
In his last role at Philips, Karunakaran was the global HR Business Partner for Image Guided Therapy (IGT) Mobile Surgery business. His role included developing HR Strategic priorities based on critical business imperatives and deploying key initiatives around leadership capability, business critical competence, creating a high-performance culture for the business across geographies in various functions like Product Development, Marketing, Customer Services, Procurement, Manufacturing etc in India and Netherlands.
Karunakaran began his professional journey with Tech Mahindra as a HR generalist in 1998 and then moved to Astra Zeneca as a manager HR after three years. He has also worked with Fidelity Investments before he joined Philips in 2009. He stayed with Philips for almost close to a decade and grew through the ranks before joining Cargill Business Services.
An experienced HR professional with over two decades of managing leadership roles, he has a rich and cross cultural exposure in handling the entire gamut of HR including strategy formulation, organisation development, HR business partnering, culture building interventions, change management, talent acquisition, talent management, compensation and benefits, training and development, performance management.
Karunakaran is a business management graduate from Barkatullah Vishwavidyalaya and completed his post-graduation in human resources from Savitribai Phule Pune University.