Sajiri Chidgupkar
Director & Principal Consultant

Despite the hardships many women endure daily, the 21st century is for women. It has witnessed tremendous achievements in three major areas - education, rights and leadership. This has driven the change with accelerating gender equality. The dynamics of today’s business environment has changed particularly because of women business leaders playing an important role in making the transition away from business as usual. Not only are they leading in managerial roles but also assuming personal responsibility for tackling issues concerning gender equality, poverty eradication, children, education and climate change.

One such inspiring story is of Sajiri Chidgupkar. As a HR professional with over a decade’s experience in various verticals of HR, Sajiri creates connect with the participants which lasts beyond the program and ensures a greater implementation of the learning from the workshop.“It all started with an aim to bring in more end result focused in the area of people processes. We are always focused on being able to show a bottom line difference in our offerings. It is definitely not easy, but having our focus clear has played its role. In fact, I refer to it as people processes and not as HR as for reasons to which we have all contributed HR have become synonymous with recruitment,” she avers.

Sajiri’s corporate profile has seen her working in various verticals of human resource management like employee engagement before moving into the learning vertical. Her initial years as a business partner HR has given her the ability to see how the HR processes work at the ground level. She brings with her an ability to gauge the practicality of an HR or OD initiative from the reality of implementation. The constant support by her family and friends has proved to an important factor for her high achievements. “It would not have been possible without the support of my family. They have always respected my passion. We realized it very early that, to be able to run after our passions, everyone in the family would have to work in perfect tandem and though we at times fail we are very sure that is the way forward,” she says.

Turning Obstacles into Opportunities
Business plans, while quintessential for any business, can’t predict everything. Even the most prepared of business leaders have unforeseen challenge that can be incredibly discouraging, breeding grief and lots of undue second-guessing. Sajiri is no exception. One of the earliest challenges she faced at AnD Solutions was that of perception. “There is a very strong perception about how a consultant should look like. So, consultants should be old (because supposedly age guarantees experience), consultant should have worked in the same industry, results should be visible within a month if not a week. The biggest hurdle was the perception that anyone can do HR. These are perception we still fight on a daily basis,” she informs.