Abhishek has more than 22 years of experience in the field of Human Resources across diverse industries and geographies. His industry exposure includes, but is not limited to – Automotive, HR Consulting, Financial Services, IT & Business Process Outsourcing, Pharmaceuticals, Medical & Consumer Goods, Real Estate & Workplace Design, Consumer Internet Technology, Mobile Gaming, and Fintech. Abhishek has been in HR Leadership roles for more than a decade and has demonstrated expertise in the areas of talent acquisition, talent & leadership development, performance management, succession planning, coaching and management of change. Abhishek is a postgraduate in management with a specialization in HR from Symbiosis University Pune(India), and he holds an executive Masters degree in change, consulting and coaching from INSEAD(France/Singapore). He is also an ACC-certified coach from ICF.
In his last corporate role, he was the VP – HR and Chief People Officer for VNG, the largest Internet technology company in Vietnam, and one of the first tech unicorns in SEA. As part of the role, he was responsible for the people operations for 4500 employees across Vietnam and SEA.
Abhishek has built and led teams to deliver HR services to business units and client groups. This responsibility included the scaling up of operations across geographies – such as for the game entertainment business in SEA for VNG; design studios across APAC for Space Matrix; as well as businesses for different client groups in GE Capital/Genpact. In all these strategic roles, Abhishek has provided thought leadership and demonstrated expertise by creating sustainable leadership and talent pipelines through succession planning and clear capability development plans for identified high-potential successors.
At Space Matrix as well as Johnson & Johnson ANZ, Abhishek supported M&A initiatives of the business. He successfully led due diligence and helped with the post-acquisition integration of companies in China and Australia.
Abhishek is passionate about the collaboration between HR and Business to build a high-performance yet engaging corporate culture and has played a pivotal role in doing this with Johnson & Johnson, Space Matrix as well as VNG. All these organizations were certified as “Great Places to Work” and the engagement & performance scores of employees saw significant increases of an average of 5% points.
After 22 years of working with large corporates, across Europe, India, SEA, and the Pacific, Abhishek is delighted to set up his own boutique HR advisory, consulting, and executive coaching practice – Potential Lab. Through this venture, he is committed to giving back to the community by adding value to individuals who are looking to transform themselves as better leaders, teams that want to work cohesively to achieve high performance, and organizations that are looking for partnerships to help build a robust and effective HR strategy aligned to their business goals and mission.
When Abhishek is not working, he likes to travel, play golf (amateur) & badminton, and spend time in the beautiful coffee shops in Saigon, observing the city as it goes by.