A keen observer, witty, sharp acumen, continous learner, and on a ligher side, an HR book in himself. This could be the most apt way to describe the persona of Mr. Anjul Gupta, a thorough HR professional and a pass out of the 2002 batch, Indian Institute of Planning & Management creating a wonderful reputation in the industry. An extremely passionate, committed and honest individual by nature, Mr. Gupta’s nine years of corporate experience are easily what he considers to be the most successful years of his life so far.
His journey started in exactly the same fashion as it has for most graduates in this country: finding out ‘What to do next?’. He was never too keen to pursue an MBA and had an interest in IT. Finally, he enrolled for an MCA with a reputed university. However, when he was about to pay the fee for the course, his sister spoke to him and suggested that he go far an MBA instead as he was very good with economics and commerce. Mr. Gupta then took what he considers one of the best decisions of his life and dropped the idea of pursuing MCA to join IIPM and study manage ment. Mr. Gupta knew very little about IIPM. But as he completed his two years with IIPM, he found that IIPM not only provided its students with great exposure through a world class curriculum, but also helped a lot with personality enhancement of the student in order to garner success in the corporate world.
Mr. Gupta’s corporate journey commenced with Intercontinental Hotels, a job he and a friend at IIPM secured through campus placements. He joined them in 2002 as an HR executive and in two years, was promoted as a senior executive. Mr. Gupta had a great journey at Intercontinental, he fondly reminisces. He strongly believes that the hospitality sector is the best to gather knowledge about the field of HR as it is heavily dependent on people for quality. The connections made during the tenure at Intercontinental also helped him bag a great opportunity to write a book along with Dr. Sahib Singh Verma about Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. Dr. Verma, Editor of Hindustan Times, along with Mr. Gupta spent nearly 5 months researching on Dr. Kalam. They even visited Dr. Kalam’s place of birth! After tons of research and five dummy copies, the book was finally released and Dr. Verma himself handed over a copy to Dr. Kalam. This experience, Mr. Gupta believes, has been one of the biggest highlights of his career. It was during this project that he met Mr. Madhukar Kamat, the then CEO and MD of Mudra Communications. Mr. Gupta was offered a position with Mudra and he then moved to Mudra Communications where he admits, he had to take some tough measures personally to blend into the culture. Coming from the hospitality sector, the casual fun-filled and creativity driven atmosphere at Mudra was somewhat a cultural shock.
Since it was an organisation with creative people, there seemed to be no need to ask a person to don a suit and a tie to unleash his creativity. At Mudra, he learned the concepts of APL, media buying and media selling in the good two and a half years spent there. After Mudra, Mr. Gupta shifted back to the hospitality sector to join the Carlson Group: a hospitality group with hotel brands like Park Plaza and Radisson. He worked closely with Mr. Yogesh, MD-HR with Radisson. He used to shunt between the Radisson property and the Park Plaza property every week, spending three days at each center. This involved setting up policies for a 45 room property that was just a start-up! After Carlson Group, Mr. Gupta moved to RC&M Experiential Marketing Pvt Ltd., a company that organised all kinds of events, promotions, seminars and conferences PAN India, Mr. Gupta was involved in strategic HR function s. He spent close to three and half years here.
Since then, he has been working with Silverglades, a 25 years old organisation. The Chairman is Mr. Pradeep Jain who is an ex ITC person. With a background in the domain of land division at ITC, Mr. Jain set up Silverglades which caters to only niche land projects across India. Silverglades is the co-promoter of Classic Golf Resort and The Laburnum Condominium, which is the first ever project in Gurgaon in a collaboration with ITC. Silverglades also is the creator of the Imperial golf estate, a 284 acre project. With an 18 hole international golf course, running in Mullapur, Ludhiana, it is a pure township created out of a
joint venture between Silverglades and an Israel based company. Mr. Gupta is currently handling the HR for this special project.
Mr. Gupta shares that earlier, the real estate sector never used to understand the HR function. Real estate employers usually followed a hire and fire policy and HR had little meaning in such an environment. However with the changing times, the trends have altered. With competition in the sector increasing, even real estate companies are struggling to retain people. Mr. Gupta strongly believes that you have to retain your best people today if you wish to top the competition. He shares that this is what makes the job of the HR department very difficult compared to other business functions as it is relatively easy to deal with products than to deal with people.
A TEAM WORKS HAPPILY ONLY WHEN YOU ARE YOURSELF AND UNDERSTAND PEOPLE FROM DEPTH…
For Mr. Gupta, real estate is a wonderful industry to work with. People have a misconception that once you enter the real estate industry you will never be able to cross over onto another industry but these notions have changed today.
At Silverglades, the HR policies are based on the foundations of training & development and employee engagement. Mr. Gupta strongly stresses on the power of these two functions to help retain people and extract the best out of them. The real estate sector is known to be a very stressful workplace considering the fact that a simple sale may take close to 6 months to mature.
Throughout his corporate journey, the one important thing he learnt was that ‘flexibility is king’: One should not be asked to follow the policy verbatim. One should use common sense and allow policies to be interpreted in a general fashion. You should also treat all your colleagues as friends as that is very important to create a great working atmosphere. He is personally of the opinion that one need not have a ‘Salutation Culture’ of Sir or Ma’am to get work done. In fact Mr. Gupta believes that a ‘First Name Calling’ policy does wonders for an open and transparent work culture.
Recollecting his days at IIPM, Mr.Anjul says the experience had been really wonderful. They had a great time in the institute and he even remembers some of the lectures. He says that those two years were wonderful: they would be busy all the time with projects, exams and attending lectures. Those days will always remain most memorable and can never come back, rues Mr. Gupta. He shares that the Mandi campus, where the second year classes were held, was real fun. He still remembers some of the lectures given by Prof. P.C. Bagga, Prof. Veena Malik and Prof. Satish Kumar.
Mr. Gupta is also interested in Academics as a hobby, and is currently visiting faculty at many management schools. He feels the difference between classroom and workstations is very critical. There are set books for HR but that doesn’t help, as HR as a subject cannot be understood only from textbooks. He feels that such a curriculum should be designed where institutes tie up with corporates to provide practical knowledge that actually helps, which is then supplemented with facts from the texts. He feels guest lectures are not useful as they often just provide an overview. It is practical knowledge that really helps students get through jobs and make great careers.
He does not follow any particular leadership style. According to him, a team works happily only when you are yourself, understand people from depth, are patient and calm, and maintain a very friendly and open approach. He simply loves spending time with his daughter Aaishi and it is the one thing he looks forward to after completing his work for the day. He also spends time with his parents and tries to make up for the hours he spends at work away from the family. Mr. Gupta also loves watching TV, eating, gifting and travelling.
But the one thing he is most passionate about is HR. Mr. Gupta suggests that people should read a lot, be open and approachable, and try to be nice to everyone around.
His advice for the young professionals is that one should be focused, very clear and passionate about the profession one chooses. He believes that in the corporate world, only those people are appreciated who are down to earth and passionate about their work.
