Bharti Airtel has elevated senior HR leader Akanksha Kanojia to a group-level role overseeing talent strategy, workplace culture and diversity-led initiatives, signalling a sharper focus on leadership depth and organisational capability as the company navigates its next growth cycle.
The appointment places Kanojia in charge of talent development, cultural integration and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) across Airtel’s businesses. Operating from Gurugram, she will work closely with the company’s leadership teams to shape long-term people priorities aligned with business execution.
Akanksha Kanojia’s Apppointment: A Larger Trend
The internal recruitment by Airtel is a part of a larger trend in large Indian corporations that rely less on external talent and more on in-house experience when it comes to high-profile positions such as this that shape their culture. Sources acquainted with this process now find that a certain continuity in leadership has become paramount in order to balance their size with their digitalization of their workforce.
Kanojia brings over a decade of experience within Airtel, having worked across both frontline and transformation-oriented HR mandates. In her most recent assignment, she led human resources for the company’s DTH and customer experience operations, focusing on employee engagement, operational alignment and workforce effectiveness in high-impact, customer-facing environments.
She previously managed organization productivity transformation initiatives, was the HR Head for Circle, and collaborated with sales and distribution organizations as an HR business partner. These roles brought her where HR meets business, especially during times of structural transformation.
With Kanojia assuming responsibility for talent, culture and DEI, Airtel is underlining the strategic importance of leadership readiness, inclusive workplaces and performance-driven culture, areas that increasingly influence retention, execution speed and long-term competitiveness in India’s telecom and digital services sectors.
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