Kickstarting the conference. Secure your seat early to avoid missing out on this opportunity to level up your conference experience.

A narrative session to ignite reflection, intention, and action. This session invites leaders to lead the legacy of great work by balancing the precision of technology with the depth of human insight. It’s about moving beyond strategy rooms to influence the everyday tech experience, the systems, tools, and interactions that define how people collaborate, learn, and grow. We’ll explore how the most forward-thinking leaders are collaborating across functions (HR, technology, and business) to design cultures that are agile, inclusive, and AI-ready. And how they are harmonising tech and talent, ensuring that transformation is not just about scale or efficiency, but about unlocking human potential.

The enterprises that win next are those that learn not just what AI can do, but how to use it to work smarter, move faster, and innovate continuously. This keynote delivers a practical, no-nonsense roadmap to turn AI from a set of experiments into a true performance engine. We’ll explore how to redesign workflows with intelligence at the core, how to empower people to work at machine-level speed, and how to build the governance that keeps AI safe, ethical, and trusted – in short: How to use AI for enterprise success. Leaders will walk away with clarity on the capabilities that matter, the shifts to prioritise now, and the strategic moves that turn AI into a scalable advantage.

VP & Principal Analyst

The Gallup Culture Risks Survey 2025 found that Indian workplaces face risks in performance management, agility, and leadership inspiration, even while ethics and inclusion remain strengths. This panel reflects on the leadership culture imperative in the Indian workplace. How must leaders must evolve: from rule‑keepers to culture‑builders, driving resilience, trust, and adaptive value in fast‑changing times?

Grab your coffee, head towards the Ideas Of The Future Zone, meet our world-class HR & work technology partners & explore innovative solutions!

The CHRO role is being rewritten for an AI-first world. No longer just the custodian of culture or talent, the modern CHRO is the architect of interconnected systems where technology, data, and human behavior align to drive enterprise agility. This session explores how CHROs are evolving into Chief Systems Orchestrators, harmonising AI, automation, and human potential to build organisations that think, learn, and adapt in real time. It’s not just about leading people it’s about designing the ecosystem where people and intelligence thrive together.

SVP HR

Senior President and Chief Human Resources, Investigation & Loss Mitigation and Administration

As AI and intelligent technologies reshape the workplace, the role of the CHRO is entering a defining new era. This conversation explores how technology is expanding—not replacing—the strategic influence of people leaders, and what it takes to remain indispensable in the decade ahead. The discussion will examine where HR leadership is becoming automated, where human judgment and leadership remain irreplaceable, and how CHROs can create greater business value through workforce economics, organizational design, and enterprise transformation. It will also explore the evolving expectations that CEOs and boards have of today’s people leaders, and the capabilities HR executives must build now to lead with greater strategic impact in an AI-powered future.

Vice President - HR

Founder & CEO

Group Head- Corporate HR

Research by McKinsey consistently shows that organisational health is the strongest predictor of long-term value creation, outperforming strategy, structure, and even short-term financial performance.
Participants will gain insights into the core elements that define organisational health, including clarity of direction, effective decision-making, accountability, talent development, and the ability to renew and adapt over time. The session will also examine how leaders can move beyond episodic transformation to embed health into the organizational DNA, creating resilience and competitive advantage.

With roles changing faster than job descriptions can keep up, organisations are shifting toward skills-based talent models. This session will focus on how Indian organisations are practically moving from traditional, role-centric structures to skills-driven hiring, development, and deployment. The discussion will explore how skills are being identified, measured, and matched to work—along with the challenges of integrating these models into legacy systems. Panelists will share lessons learned, early wins, and pitfalls to avoid while building internal talent marketplaces and more fluid career pathways. Leaders will gain actionable insights into how a skills-first approach can improve agility, access untapped talent, and future-proof workforce strategies.

Recharge & connect! Enjoy a delicious meal and networking, paving the way for your next breakthrough.

Building a lasting institution requires more than preserving a legacy. It demands the courage to continuously reinvent it. As consumer expectations evolve, technology reshapes industries, and businesses scale across markets, leaders must balance tradition with transformation. In this conversation, Dr. Ashok Tyagi shares the leadership philosophy behind modernising one of India's most iconic brands while staying true to its heritage and values. From driving innovation and professionalisation to nurturing talent and embracing change, the session explores how organisations can remain relevant, resilient, and future-ready without losing the identity that made them successful.

Executive Director

Senior Editor - India, APAC & ME

Leading global teams is no longer about proximity it’s about trust, clarity, and adaptability. This session examines how leaders are navigating the complexities of distributed, cross-border workforces, from compliance and collaboration to culture and performance. Discover the leadership capabilities required to manage global teams effectively, build inclusive cultures, and maintain alignment across geographies in an increasingly borderless world of work.

As AI reshapes the workplace, employee well-being is evolving from a support function to a strategic business imperative. This session explores how digital health, predictive care, and AI-powered interventions are transforming workforce health while preserving the human edge. Discover how organizations can build healthier, more resilient workforces that drive productivity, engagement, and sustainable performance.

Senior Director - HR, South Asia

Chief of Institutional Business

It is time to move beyond AI adoption to AI impact—using technology to meaningfully enhance human performance and unlock workforce potential. It explores how AI can augment decision-making, personalize learning, and enable smarter, faster ways of working, while keeping people at the core. Leaders will gain clarity on where AI delivers real value in the employee lifecycle, what capabilities are needed to scale it responsibly, and how to prepare talent to work effectively alongside intelligent systems.

CHRO

In an era defined by disruption, skills not roles are becoming the true currency of organizational success. This session examines how leading organisations are using skills intelligence to inform workforce planning, leadership development, and innovation strategy. Discover how treating skills as a strategic asset enables HR and business leaders to make better talent decisions, close capability gaps, and build sustainable competitive advantage.

Stay tuned! This space is being transformed into something extraordinary for the celebration of the year

TechHR Night Fest is an evening dedicated to the memories, moments, and connections that have shaped our community over the years. This year, we're bringing those memories to life with The Copycats, one of India's most loved live bands, known for their signature blend of English classics, Bollywood favourites, and Punjabi anthems.
After a full day of bold ideas and meaningful conversations, it's time to unwind with peers, reconnect with familiar faces, meet new ones, sing along, dance, and celebrate the incredible HR community that comes together at TechHR each year.
Join us for an unforgettable evening of music, celebration, shared nostalgia that makes TechHR Night Fest a tradition everyone looks forward to.

After a stimulating day of ideas and inspiration, let's relax, connect, and savour delicious food & drinks.

Centre Stage

India has become a global powerhouse in talent development, agile workforce management, and innovative HR practices. From its rich tradition of building resilient, resourceful teams to its rapid adoption of cutting-edge HR tech, the Indian approach to talent has unique lessons for the world. This fireside chat will bring together a global HR leader and a pioneering Indian CHRO to explore how India’s talent playbook—rooted in adaptability, diversity, and human-centric leadership—can inspire organisations everywhere to orchestrate growth with a human edge.

As Asia’s workforce becomes more age-diverse than ever, organisations must move beyond stereotypes to build truly agile, multigenerational workplaces. This dialogue for change brings together diverse leaders to explore how culture, policies, and talent strategies must evolve to meet differing aspirations, work styles, and expectations across generations. From attracting Gen Z while retaining institutional wisdom, to redesigning learning, performance, flexibility, and career pathways, the panel will examine how organizations can create shared purpose without enforcing uniformity. The conversation will spotlight practical approaches to fostering inclusion, strengthening cross-generational collaboration, and building workplaces that are resilient, relevant, and future-ready.

As AI becomes embedded into everyday work, HR is evolving into an intelligent system that powers productivity, decision-making, and trust at scale. This session explores how AI copilots, secure data foundations, and responsible AI frameworks are enabling HR teams to move beyond automation toward true intelligence. Learn how organisations are integrating AI into workflows while maintaining transparency, governance, and human oversight ensuring that innovation strengthens trust rather than eroding it.

Decision-making used to be the job. It's how leaders earned their seat, read the data, weighed the trade-offs, called the shot. AI is now doing that faster and, in many cases, better: forecasting demand, flagging risk, even recommending who to hire or let go. That leaves CHROs with a question most haven't answered yet will AI replace leaders, but if AI is making the calls, what decisions are actually left for humans to own and are your leaders equipped to make them?

Join Us For A Networking Lunch & Connect With Industry Professionals Over A Delicious Meal

HR technology investments continue to grow at an unprecedented pace, yet many organisations struggle to demonstrate clear returns on these investments. This session examines why increasing spend on HR tech has not translated into proportional business impact—and what leaders can do differently. Drawing on SHRPA 2025 insights, the discussion will unpack common pitfalls such as poor problem definition, low adoption, fragmented tech stacks, unclear ownership and weak ROI frameworks. Leaders will explore how to shift the focus from implementation to value realisation, align HR tech decisions with business priorities, and design success metrics that matter to the C-suite.

Let's confront confront the real risk facing modern enterprises: comfort with yesterday’s success. Drawing from Indian and global business stories, this session explores why some organizations reinvent themselves repeatedly while others slowly fade, even with resources, scale, and legacy on their side.

For decades, careers were built on predictable ladders—roles, titles, and timelines clearly defined by hierarchy. Gen Z is rejecting this model outright. They value speed, variety, purpose, and optionality over linear progression, and technology is accelerating this shift. This session explores how careers are being reimagined at the intersection of human aspiration and machine intelligence. As AI-powered talent marketplaces, skills clouds, and project-based work gain ground, experience—not tenure—is becoming the new currency of growth. Leaders must rethink how opportunity is discovered, matched, and experienced, blending AI-driven insights with human coaching, trust, and choice. The challenge is not just enabling mobility, but preserving dignity, autonomy, and motivation in a non-linear world. Learn how organizations can design career ecosystems where technology guides possibilities, humans retain agency, and Gen Z feels seen, empowered, and invested in shaping their own futures.

Nalli isn’t just India’s most recognisable saree house, it’s a 97-year-old family business that keeps choosing to rebuild itself. In this fireside chat, Lavanya Nalli, Vice-Chairperson of the Nalli Group and the first woman in five generations to join the business, traces the journey from her grandfather’s wartime-era trust with customers to the perception-breaking bet of Nalli Next, a profitable e-commerce business built from scratch, and her team’s recent, deliberate embrace of AI. But this isn’t a retrospective, it’s a conversation about what comes next: how she’s thinking about the sixth generation, what she’s choosing not to preserve, and what it really takes to renew a legacy instead of just protecting it. For leaders navigating their own inherited systems, cultures, or reputations, this session offers a rare, honest look at continuity as an active practice, not a fixed asset.

In this inspiring session, Chetna Gala Sinha shares the journey of building one of India’s most influential community-led institutions, redefining access, entrepreneurship, and economic empowerment for rural women through innovation rooted in real human needs. The conversation will explore how mission-driven organisations scale impact, create cultures of ownership and resilience, and develop teams capable of translating vision into measurable change across diverse communities. This session offers valuable lessons for leaders looking to drive transformation with business relevance, people-centric execution, and long-term societal impact.

Founder & Chairperson

Capt. Ishver Dholakiya spent 14 years in India’s diamond industry before making an unlikely pivot - building Goldi Solar from a 10 MW operation into a 15.2 GW manufacturing powerhouse. This keynote isn’t just about clean energy as a business category; it’s about what it takes to build sustainable innovation at a scale that moves the needle on national economic priorities that include energy self-sufficiency, manufacturing capability, and India’s competitiveness in a global clean-energy race.

Founder & MD

In an age of AI, constant change, burnout, and shifting employee expectations, organisations are being forced to answer a deeper question—not about productivity, but about responsibility. What do organisations truly owe their people now? Are organisations prepared to trade control for care, efficiency for empathy? What does it mean to be a good employer when loyalty, tenure, and careers look radically different?

The next advantage lies in: Human judgment over automated answers. Context over computation. Creativity over optimisation. Ethics over efficiency. Meaning over metrics. In a world where machines execute faster, humans decide better. This theme challenges leaders to rethink value creation not through more technology, but through how work is designed, decisions are made, and people are empowered to apply uniquely human strengths at scale.

What does it take to lead when the stakes are real? When a wrong call costs lives, when pressure is not a metaphor, and when the people you command must trust you completely? General Kanwaljeet Singh Dhillon (Retd.), a soldier, strategist, and institution-builder who commanded India's most consequential operations and spent four decades proving that the truest measure of a leader is the leaders they leave behind. But what makes General Dhillon's story truly rare is not just what he commanded. It is what he built. Institutions. Futures. Leaders who went on to lead. In this fireside conversation, he brings those lessons to the boardroom — on building cultures of courage, designing talent that performs under pressure, and the one question every leader must eventually answer: when you step away, what leadership have you left behind?

Growth Stage

For years, AI in HR and talent acquisition has meant automation layered onto disconnected systems: faster execution of the same manual decisions, with a human still required at every step. That's changing fast. This masterclass explores agentic AI, systems that don't just execute tasks but make decisions autonomously across the talent lifecycle, and what it means for leaders trying to industrialize AI without losing the human judgment that makes hiring and people decisions work. We'll unpack the real difference between automation and true autonomy, why most HR tech stacks aren't built to support it, and what leaders should be evaluating now to move from AI experimentation to AI orchestration.

Founder and CEO

Recognition today is no longer about annual awards it’s about building a culture where appreciation is frequent, visible, and embedded into everyday work. This session explores the evolution of recognition-as-a-platform, where technology enables peer-to-peer appreciation, leadership recognition, and value-aligned moments at scale. Discover how organizations are using recognition to strengthen culture, drive discretionary effort, and create a sense of belonging in hybrid and distributed environments.

Talent experience has emerged as a critical differentiator in competitive hiring markets. This session explores how organizations are delivering personalised, consistent, and engaging experiences across the entire hiring lifecycle from attraction and discovery to onboarding and mobility. Learn how AI-driven insights and experience design are enabling personalization at scale without compromising authenticity, fairness, or trust. The session will highlight how experience-led hiring strategies are shaping employer brand and long-term talent outcomes.

In today’s volatile environment, leaders must make fast, confident decisions while guiding teams through uncertainty. This immersive bootcamp puts participants into real-world scenarios to practice adaptive leadership in action. Through simulations, role-play, and rapid-response exercises, leaders will learn how to anticipate disruption, respond under pressure, and adjust plans without losing direction or team trust. The session focuses on building leadership agility, clarity in chaos, and the ability to navigate change with composure and collaboration.

Leadership development remains one of HR’s largest investments, but participation, completion and satisfaction scores reveal little about whether leaders behave differently when it matters. DDI reports that 78% of HR professionals consider behaviour change the most valuable measure of leadership-development impact.
This masterclass helps participants reverse-engineer leadership development from the behaviours the business needs. Working through a real organisational priority—such as AI adoption, innovation, accountability or retention—they will define observable leadership behaviours, diagnose capability gaps, design opportunities for practice and determine how change will be measured. The session can demonstrate how objective insights, situational-judgement assessments, simulations, peer practice and workplace application can create personalised development at scale.

HR is not broken, it's outdated. Most HR organisations are still running in an old “service delivery model” with today’s ""product-led, AI-augmented, experience-centered HR. Modern HR is built by designers, technologists, and futurists, not administrators.
To mentally unshackle from legacy thinking, this interactive session will explore, how we can collectively paint the new HROS canvas for 2026 and beyond.

In a fast-changing workplace, leaders must navigate tough conversations with clarity, empathy, and confidence. This masterclass equips leaders with the skills to handle sensitive topics, performance, conflict, boundaries, feedback, and change, with greater impact and less friction. Participants will learn conversational frameworks, emotional cues, and language techniques that build trust, reduce defensiveness, and turn difficult dialogues into opportunities for alignment and growth.

Think Tank Lab

Live Chats, Big Debates & Experiential Sessions

An immersive percussion-led experience where participants create one unified rhythm through collective beats and synchronized energy. Guided by facilitators, the session transforms individual contributions into a powerful shared performance, reinforcing collaboration, trust, and the impact of moving in sync as one team. High-energy, interactive, and impossible to just sit through.

Founder

Fear, uncertainities and disruptions, let's move beyond these emotions and jargons! Explore what exciting trends are shaping a brighter present and future for talent. How can you make a difference and contribute to this positive side of change?

Through sharp questions and instinctive responses, this segment cuts through the hype to explore what it truly takes to move AI from experimentation to habit, and from curiosity to confidence—for leaders, managers, and employees alike.

As AI rapidly reshapes organisations, a critical question is emerging for HR leaders: should HR take the lead in defining the organisation’s AI strategy, or should it play an enabling role while business and technology teams drive the agenda? This session explores both sides of the debate, drawing on SHRPA 2025 insights that reveal high confidence in change readiness but limited preparedness for AI execution. Leaders will debate whether HR has the mandate, capability and credibility to lead AI strategy, or whether its greatest value lies in enabling scale, trust and people readiness.

Culture isn’t about perfection, it’s about listening, adjusting, and making space. In this session, step away from the noise to learn how you can create a better collaborative team with the power of presence.

What must humans uniquely bring to the duet? What happens when tech leads without human judgment? How does culture enable or block this collaboration? Learn how CTOs and CHROs together can drive more meaningful impact with AI.

Think you know AI? Think again. Welcome to The AI for HR Quiz Show, a fast-paced, laugh-out-loud, brain-stretching session where HR meets artificial intelligence… and humans still win!
This is not a technical masterclass. This is AI explained the fun way through myths, real-life HR dilemmas, ethical curveballs, and 'wait… is that actually AI?' moments.

Summarising and highlighting key takeaways, powerful statements and insights from the different sessions.

A music-based experience that brings collaboration to life by showing how teams function not as individuals, but as interconnected systems. In this immersive session, participants step into an orchestra-like simulation where every role — leader, contributor, pace-setter, and supporter — directly impacts the collective outcome. There are no instruments required and no musical talent expected — just presence, awareness, and a willingness to listen.

Unconference

Step Away To Unwind: Welcome To Humans @ Work
Step into a space with no slides, no agenda, and no prompts to optimise. Drop in to write on The Real Talk Wall, add your stroke to The Collaboration Canvas, or join a Human Connect Circle — a guided networking experience designed to spark real conversations across roles and perspectives. Light, unstructured, and entirely yours. Because some of the best thinking happens when you stop performing and simply show up as human.

Step into a space with no slides, no agenda, and no prompts to optimise. Drop in to write on The Real Talk Wall, add your stroke to The Collaboration Canvas, or join a Human Connect Circle — a guided networking experience designed to spark real conversations across roles and perspectives. Light, unstructured, and entirely yours. Because some of the best thinking happens when you stop performing and simply show up as human.

A guided, high-energy interaction experience designed to spark real conversations beyond the usual introductions. Through curated prompts and rapid group exchanges, participants connect across roles, industries, and perspectives — making networking feel more human, natural, and memorable. Light, engaging, and built to turn strangers into collaborators.

Team Engagement and Strategic Partnerships

An interactive doodle wall anchored by one question: What does leading the legacy mean — for your people and your business? Pick up a marker, draw, scribble, write a word. No artistic talent required. Just your instinct.

A potter works at the wheel all day, creating something from nothing. Stop to watch for a moment — or sit down and try it yourself. Take home what you make, or simply carry the memory of getting your hands dirty.

What if your best ideas emerged not from thinking harder, but from playing more? Step into a hands-on clay art experience designed to help you reconnect with curiosity, imagination, and the joy of creating without expectations. Guided by experienced facilitators, participants will shape, mold, and craft their own clay creation—allowing intuition and creativity to take the lead. Working with clay encourages mindfulness, reduces stress, and reminds us that innovation often begins when we embrace experimentation over perfection. As your hands bring ideas to life, you'll rediscover the freedom to explore, make mistakes, and create something uniquely your own.

Tell the wall how you're feeling and let it guide you. Need a mental break? Solve a puzzle. Feeling overwhelmed? Grab a grounding card. Low energy? Try the 2-minute breathwork prompt. The wall meets you where you are.

Humans @ Work Lounge

Move beyond AI conversations and into AI action. Explore hands-on AI applications, test practical tools, and discover real workflows that can transform the way you work. Whether you're creating, automating, analysing, or experimenting, every station is designed to help you learn by doing. Drop in, explore at your own pace, and leave with ideas you can put to work immediately. Because the fastest way to understand AI is to experience it.

Holger Mueller, who tracks enterprise AI adoption across hundreds of organizations at Constellation Research — takes your hardest questions live: What's genuinely AI-native versus repackaged legacy tech? Where should you buy instead of build (and where will building save you)? How do you spot the gaps in your current stack before they cost you? If you're staring down an AI roadmap decision and want a straight answer instead of a pitch deck, bring your toughest question, this is the room to ask it in.

A fast, hands-on challenge where you select one everyday task and transform it into a smarter, AI-powered workflow. In just 30 minutes, you’ll go from idea to execution, building something you can actually use at work the very next day. Light, practical, and competitive, with the best builds featured live.

Quick commerce rebuilt an entire supply chain around one obsession: speed without breaking quality. Ten-minute delivery didn't happen by working the old model faster, it happened by rearchitecting sourcing, inventory, and fulfillment from the ground up. Hiring hasn't caught up. The average mid-senior hire in India still takes over a month, even as AI, pre-built talent pools, and skills-based assessments make most of that timeline optional rather than inevitable. This session applies the quick commerce playbook to talent acquisition. In a fast-paced format built for senior HR and hiring leaders, we'll break down the four levers reshaping how fast great hiring can move, AI-driven sourcing and screening, pre-engaged talent pools, employer brand as always-on infrastructure, and skill-ready hiring through integrated assessments with a live segment featuring Zepto's CHRO, whose team hires at genuine quick-commerce speed and scale. Then it gets hands-on. Leaders will break into teams for a live hackathon, building a real 30-minute hiring sprint against an actual hiring case followed by a rapid-fire debrief where the sharpest approaches get pressure-tested live, on stage. You'll leave with: a working framework for compressing your own hiring funnel, a tested playbook from a company that hires at delivery-app speed, and a takeaway you can put into practice starting Monday.

How To AI @ Work Playground

In a world of compounding disruption, the organisations that will endure are the ones that bring their people with them. Learn from a real story of a leader who navigated transformation in conditions that had no precedent, a market shock, a merger, a forced pivot, a crisis and had to make consequential people decisions without the comfort of best practice. The session is about judgment under uncertainty: how you decide when the data is incomplete, how you hold the team when the direction keeps shifting, and what you wish you had known before you started.

The pace of business transformation has outrun the pace of people development. Workforce planning cycles that once ran annually now need to run in real time. This session is about what it looks like when HR stops reacting and starts orchestrating — connecting skills data, workforce planning, learning infrastructure, and business priorities into one coherent, fast-moving system. Learn how to build capacity dynamically, redeploying internal talent, running targeted reskilling sprints, and filling critical roles faster using analytics and mobility frameworks

What guides your most critical people decisions? Is it instinct, policy, or a clear philosophy? A company’s talent philosophy is the explicit expression of how it plans to manage people to achieve its strategy. High-performing organisations are explicit about what they believe when it comes to managing talent and those beliefs or the talent philosophy becomes the invisible force shaping culture and performance. In this session, leaders will explore the key behaviours and leadership mindsets that shape fair, consistent talent decisions. Drawing on proven frameworks and principles around performance, potential, and accountability, the keynote offers a fresh lens on how modern leaders lead to inspire confidence, drive engagement, and fuel organisational growth.

Author | President

In a polycrisis world, heavily disrupted by AI, we are witnessing the emergence of the 'Superworker', an individual whose performance is amplified through intelligent collaboration with machines. But this shift raises critical questions. What truly defines a superworker in an AI-enabled workplace? How do organisations redesign roles, performance metrics, and leadership models to unlock augmented human potential? This panel explores how AI is transforming not just workflows, but the very nature of work, talent, and human capability. From reskilling at scale to redefining excellence, we examine what it takes to build a workforce that doesn’t compete with AI but thrives because of it.

Head HR

To move leaders beyond forecasting the future of work into actively experiencing it. This session invites HR and business leaders to recognise present-day signals, confront uncomfortable shifts, and take responsibility for the future they are already shaping. Hiring without resumes, AI-driven task allocation, Workforce composed of employees + freelancers + AI agents, Provocation Interjections Your org chart is obsolete. What replaces it? AI suggests rejecting your most loyal employee. What do you do?

Why most GenAI deployments stall at experimentation and what it takes to scale. This session throws spotlight on process reimagination, data infrastructure, and ROI tracking.

The Gallup Culture Risks Survey 2025 found that Indian workplaces face risks in performance management, agility, and leadership inspiration, even while ethics and inclusion remain strengths. This discussion reflects on the leadership culture imperative in the Indian workplace. How must leaders must evolve: from rule‑keepers to culture‑builders, driving resilience, trust, and adaptive value in fast‑changing times?

Regional Human Resources Director & CHRO MEISA Region

For business, tech and talent leaders, one of the biggest challenge in 2026 is how to lead in a world where intelligence is abundant and constantly evolving. As automation accelerates efficiency and decision-making becomes increasingly data-driven, leaders must rethink what truly differentiates their enterprise. This candid, futurist-grounded conversation explores how growth strategies are being rewritten, how workforce models are shifting from headcount to capability, and how leadership itself must evolve. What does responsible growth look like when machines can outperform people in specific domains? How do CXOs balance scale with meaning, productivity with purpose, and innovation with accountability? At its core, this dialogue examines a defining challenge of our time: ensuring that as AI advances, human value does not diminish, it becomes clearer, sharper, and more intentional.

Google and Microsoft announced new commitments collectively amounting to over $32 billion into India's data infrastructure, with OpenAI in advanced discussions with TCS to build AI compute infrastructure. Inc42 Media When hyperscalers land at this scale, they reshape the entire talent market around them, pulling from the same pools that GCCs and IT services firms depend on, raising salary benchmarks, and setting new expectations for what good looks like. This session examines the second-order talent effects of hyperscale investment: how to compete, how to collaborate, and how India's broader tech ecosystem recalibrates.

The conversation about HR's strategic role has been ongoing for two decades. The question is no longer whether HR should create value, it is why so many still don't, and what distinguishes the ones that do. This session examines the structural, skill, and mindset shifts that separate HR functions genuinely driving business outcomes from those still managing processes and defending headcount. With real examples, real metrics, and real leaders who made the transition.

The math has changed. It is no longer human plus machine, it is human multiplied by machine. Organisations taking a tech-focused approach to AI are 1.6x more likely to not realize returns that exceed expectations compared to those taking a human-centric approach. deloitte This session unpacks what it practically means to redesign work around human-AI synergy, layering tools onto existing roles, but reimagining where human judgment ends and machine capability begins. Who owns the output? Who gets the credit? And what does performance look like when your team includes agents?

Few people move fluidly between a jingle that sells a soft drink, a lyric that wins a National Award, and now the chairmanship of India’s public broadcaster. This is a candid conversation with Prasoon Joshi on what it takes to shape culture at every scale, commercial, cinematic, and now civic, without losing the poet underneath. Learn how you can build creativity as a transferable discipline, the same instincts that write a lyric can lead an institution. Master the art of judgment and cultural fluency as leadership capabilities in an AI-saturated world.

Lyricist, Screenwriter | CEO, McCann Worldgroup India

Cricket legend Jonty Rhodes redefined what elite fielding performance looked like — pure instinct, reflex, and relentless preparation. Two decades later, he co-hosts a podcast with longevity physician Dr. Marcus Ranney, unpacking the science of performance and healthy aging. Live at TechHR, they bring that same double lens — athlete and doctor — to the workplace: how leaders were built in an era of instinct versus how they’re built now in an era of biometric data, and how organisations can use that data as an edge instead of noise to take care of their people.

Founder, President, Chief Medical Director | Author

Former International Cricketer | High-Performance Coach | Wellness Advocate

Transformation fails when change isn't embedded. How do CHROs institutionalise new behaviours, build a culture of accountability, and treat culture as a product?

When an AI agent contributes meaningfully to a business outcome, who gets the reward and how does that change the conversation about human performance and pay? Reward systems need a complete overhaul, tied to skill sets and real contributions to projects rather than formal positions. This session explores how total rewards leaders are beginning to grapple with what recognition and compensation mean when the unit of performance is no longer a single human in a single role, but a human-AI pairing operating across fluid assignments.

By 2040, your digital/robot avatar might represent you at work, attending meetings, engaging colleagues, and executing tasks.
We discuss: What jobs could avatars truly perform vs where humans still lead, Leadership of virtual teams made up of avatars, and, Ethical ownership, accountability, and identity in avatar representation.

High-capability talent teams cut time-to-fill critical roles by 17–18 days. How do analytics, mobility frameworks, and emerging tech separate best-in-class from the rest?

From micro-credentialing AI literacy to green operations, how do companies embed learning into the flow of work and measure capability value, not just completion?
Gold 8

Today, many GCCs rival headquarters in skill, domain knowledge, and execution excellence. Yet a critical gap remains. While capability has scaled, decision rights have not. This next phase of GCC evolution demands a shift from being centres that deliver work to centres that own outcomes. The real talent challenge is no longer hiring or upskilling, but designing leadership, governance, and trust that allow GCC talent to make decisions with consequence.

Most organisations are not making this decision deliberately. They are drifting into it — hiring reactively when a gap becomes visible, launching a training programme because it looks responsible, or outsourcing because it is faster — without a coherent framework for when each approach is right and what the long-term talent consequences of each choice actually are.
This session is about making that decision intentionally.

What if digitally native currencies became the norm for compensation, bonuses, and rewards across workplaces in Southeast Asia? What happens when following becomes a reality: Crypto/ token-based incentives for freelancers and gig workers, Payroll in stablecoins vs local currency and Employer reputation economies and token reputation wallets. This futuristic conversation is linked with the current Reality, where Crypto payments and digital wallets are already expanding in remittances and digital finance systems today.

Learn through diverse case studies how some of the leading organisations are driving business growth with a human and tech edge.

It’s time to move from conversation to creation. In this high-energy hackathon, teams will take one broken HR process and reimagine it through the lens of the new HR Operating System (HROS). Using systems thinking, automation concepts, and AI tools, participants will rebuild their workflows for speed, intelligence, and human impact—then pitch their prototype in just five minutes. Collaborate, compete, and co-create the next generation of HR. Takeaway: A rapid-prototyped HROS Process Map—your first blueprint for HR reinvention.

A powerful, movement-led experience inspired by the spirit of the Haka, designed to energize the room and bring people together through rhythm, voice, and synchronized action. Participants step out of their comfort zones to co-create a shared moment of intensity, confidence, and team spirit — leaving the room charged, connected, and ready to lead boldly.

India is sitting at the centre of a demand-supply mismatch that no amount of optimism will resolve on its own. Demand for AI talent is likely to cross one million roles by 2026, yet the country faces an AI skill deficit of nearly 53%, making large-scale upskilling a business necessity, not just an HR goal. Taggd This session is built for CHROs and capability leaders who need to act now — covering how GCCs are redesigning their learning architecture, partnering with universities, and building internal AI fluency programmes that move faster than the external talent market can supply.

Here at the People Matters TechHR Startup Program, we're bringing together emerging innovators ready to tackle your most pressing workplace challenges. Get ready to roll up your sleeves, because these aren't just ideas – they're actionable strategies and tech solutions to help you drive growth for your people and your business.

Most large organisations have GenAI running somewhere. Almost none have it running at the scale that changes business performance. The pilots worked. The enterprise rollout didn't. This session is for-company leaders who are past the experimentation phase and stuck at the scaling wall, examining why the gap between proof of concept and enterprise value is so persistent, and what it actually takes to cross it. Covers the three things that kill GenAI at scale that nobody wants to admit: change resistance dressed up as governance concern, data infrastructure that was never built for this, and a workforce that was told AI was coming but never told what to do with it. Practical, specific, and built for leaders who are tired of being sold transformation and need to deliver it.

Most organisations have a succession process. Very few have succession readiness. The spreadsheet exists. The nine-box exists. The annual talent review exists. And then a critical leader leaves and the organisation either promotes someone who wasn't ready or goes outside and pays a premium for someone who doesn't know the business. GCCs are hiring at unprecedented scale, creating 4.25 to 4.5 lakh jobs this year alone, yet leadership localisation remains a critical gap, with nearly 80% of GCCs having less than 10% of leadership roles based in India (Taggd report). This session names what is actually broken in succession: the conflation of high performance with leadership potential, the pipeline that is diverse on paper and homogeneous in practice, the feedback that never gets given, and the development that never happens between review cycles. Then it shows what fixing it looks like — with leaders who have done it in real organisations under real pressure.

Through real scenarios, hands-on activities, and proven frameworks, participants will learn how to balance AI-driven efficiency with human judgment, build confidence among employees, and create HR practices that are fair, clear, and trustworthy. Learn what’s working, what to watch out for, and how to build an AI-ready approach rooted firmly in people and integrity.

Immerse yourself in a hands-on exploration of what it takes to build a team of intelligent and highly capable HR leaders. In this workshop, designed for HR leaders, we will define the 6 factors that differentiate strong HR team members and the 8 Steps To High Performance.

Workshop

Step in, roll up your sleeves, and get hands-on with the craft of coffee. Explore brewing techniques, experiment with blends, and learn something new, while conversations unfold naturally around you. Unwind, connect, and let ideas flow as effortlessly as the brew.

In this hands-on Eco Resin Art masterclass, participants will design and create their own one-of-a-kind keepsake using sustainable, non-toxic eco resin. Guided by expert artists, they will experiment with colors, textures, botanicals, and design techniques to transform simple materials into a lasting piece of art that reflects their unique story. As each layer comes together, participants will experience the power of slowing down, embracing creativity, and expressing themselves beyond the workplace. The session offers a refreshing pause from the pace of the conference while reinforcing an important reminder: the most enduring legacy is one we consciously create.

Walk away with a handcrafted eco resin creation and a renewed appreciation for the impact of creativity, intentionality, and the mark each of us chooses to leave behind.

As AI grows fluent in pattern recognition, the old comfort of “AI does the routine, humans do the complex” is starting to collapse because AI is now doing plenty of complex too. What it cannot do is decide what is worth doing. This masterclass reframes the leadership conversation away from task-division and toward judgment itself: the human capacity to look at a highly probable outcome and ask whether probability should even be the deciding factor. Leaders today aren’t being replaced at the level of skill; they’re being tested at the level of discernment knowing when to trust a pattern, when to override it, and when to ask a question the data was never built to answer. The brief: The session should move through three layers of judgment that AI structurally cannot replicate. First, pursuit-worthiness — in a world where AI can surface the statistically optimal path, leaders must still decide which problems deserve their organization’s finite attention, courage, and capital, especially when the “right” answer by the numbers isn’t the right answer for the moment, the people, or the mission. Second, ethical calibration, AI can tell you what’s likely to work; it cannot tell you what you can live with, what your people can live with, or what erodes trust even while it improves a metric. Third, and most provocatively, the decision to let patterns matter at all, the leadership act of saying “this correlation is real, but it shouldn’t govern this decision,” whether that’s in hiring, performance calls, succession planning, or culture-building. The session should use real, slightly uncomfortable dilemmas (not hypotheticals) to force the room to practice this muscle live, and should land on a clear takeaway: in the AI era, leadership isn’t about being the last human doing “complex” work, it’s about being the one who decides what complexity should even mean.

As AI-generated content becomes increasingly sophisticated, the ability to see or hear someone is no longer proof of authenticity. Deepfakes are emerging as one of the biggest risks to organisational trust, leadership, and governance. Through real-world case studies, this masterclass explores how deepfake fraud is reshaping hiring, executive decision-making, and enterprise security. Participants will examine where organisations are most vulnerable, understand the human behaviours that attackers exploit, and learn practical governance measures to build resilience. An interactive simulation will challenge attendees to make high-stakes decisions and discover habits that help protect trust in the synthetic age.

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