Cyient, a global intelligent engineering solutions company, has appointed Kavita Kurup as its new chief people officer (CPO). Based at the company’s Hyderabad headquarters, Kurup will oversee the entire human resources function, globally, leading Cyient’s people, talent, and culture agenda across all geographies.
Her primary goals will be to align company’s talent strategy, leadership development, and organisational effectiveness with the company’s growth ambitions and future-ready vision.
Prior to this, Kurup was associated with UST, a digital transformation solutions provider. She joined the company in 2019 as its global head-talent and organisational transformation. She was then elevated to the role of global head of human resources in 2020. In this role, Kurup was 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 across over 25 countries.
Prior to joining UST, she was SVP and chief learning officer at Axis Bank, in 2014. 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 in 2006. Kurup served 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, in 2007, 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, in 2009, 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 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).