UST elevates Kavita Kurup to global head of HR

Kavita Kurup, who has been with UST, a digital transformation solutions provider, for close to three years, has been elevated to the position of global head of human resources. In this role, Kurup will be responsible for all aspects of UST’s human resources strategy, including talent management, leadership development, compensation and benefits, as well as all HR functions, globally, for 28,000 employees present in over 25 countries. She will work closely with the board and executive team to ensure that UST continues to build a culture that attracts, retains and develops the best talent.

Talking to HRKatha, Kurup shares, “In this new role, my focus remains on building, retaining and developing the best talent in the company. We pride ourselves in innovation and co-creating change for our clients through transformative engineering, combined with deep domain expertise and value-driven talent that engages in innovation”. She reiterates that “people are at the centre of all that we do, whether it is products that we deliver or our people practices.”

Kurup joined UST in 2019 as the global head of talent and organisational transformation. Prior to that, she was SVP and chief learning officer at Axis Bank, where she was responsible for creating and implementing strategies for a wide range of activities, including leadership development, organisational development, organisational effectiveness, succession planning, change management, learning and talent management.

With over two decades of professional experience, Kurup did not initially start her career as an HR professional. She happened to begin with finance and accounting at Hindustan Unilever (HUL), as a trainee. She also worked with STAR TV as accounts assistant and Nedungadi Bank as a probationary clerk handling the cheques, purchasing and bills discounting unit for the Mumbai region.

In 2000, Kurup joined ICICI Bank where she was a branch operations manager and central training manager. At ICICI, she was able to gather some experience in the training and development function. After working with the Bank for close to six years, Kurup moved to Citibank as a service relationship manager. Kurup had a short stint with Citibank for less than a year and quickly made a lateral shift as a senior manager-training for consumer banking, with Standard Chartered Global Shared Services Business, which Standard Chartered runs with Scope International. In this role, Kurup was responsible for skilling and reskilling the workforce as per the skill gap analysis in the company.

After spending two years with Standard Chartered, Kurup moved to JP Morgan Chase as the head-learning and development for its asset management business. In this role, she focused on creating a learning framework for the company and crafting well-designed career paths for employees.

She also worked with ING Vysya Bank (Now Kotak Mahindra) as its country head of learning and organisational development. She led all the learning and development functions and activities for the entire bank.

A commerce postgraduate from the University of Mumbai, Kurup is also an alumna of the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS).