Essar Group today announced appointment of Kaustubh Sonalkar as President–HR and Chief Executive Officer of Essar Foundation. This is his second stint with Essar — he was affiliated with Essar Energy for many years in his previous stint. Prior to this stint at Essar, he was associated with Future Group as the Group Chief People Officer, the company said in a statement. He was also the Senior Partner/ Executive Director at PWC. “Sonalkar joins Essar at a strategic inflection point in its evolution. Having completed a Rs 1,20,000 crore capital expenditure programme and a Rs 77,000 crore deleveraging campaign (the largest by any Indian corporate) in 2017, Essar is on a sustainable growth trajectory,” the statement said. In tandem with employee-centric policies and practices, Essar, through the Essar Foundation, has been working towards the uplift of the communities around the company’s manufacturing locations across eight states. It has touched the lives of a million people across 500 villages in areas like education, health, environment, skill development and women’s empowerment.
A science graduate from the University of Mumbai and holder of master’s degree in Personnel Management from the University of Pune, he also has an MSc from the London School of Economics and has more than 20 years of experience, the statement said.
Commenting on the appointment, RK Sukhdevsinhji, Director at Essar, said: “In this challenging dual role, Kaustubh will be charged with building on the strong people and community focus that will continue to define Essar’s journey into its next phase of growth.”
