Brands
Senjam Raj Sekhar joins Air India as global head of communications
Former MPL and Flipkart communications lead takes charge at Tata-owned airline
NEW DELHI: Air India has named Senjam Raj Sekhar as its new global head of communications, bringing on board a seasoned reputation strategist at a time when the Tata Group-owned airline is deep into its transformation journey.
Sekhar announced the move, calling it both an honour and a responsibility. He described Air India as an enduring emblem of the country’s aviation heritage, now entering a new phase under the Tata Group as it aims to evolve into a world class global airline with an Indian heart.
He said he looks forward to working with the communications team to tell the airline’s story as it charts its path to join the ranks of the world’s finest carriers.
Sekhar joins the airline after a five year stint at Mobile Premier League, where he served as head, global communications. At the gaming platform, he led reputation, policy and corporate communications during a period marked by regulatory shifts and intense competition. Campaigns under his leadership picked up multiple honours, including top prizes at the South Asia Sabre Awards and the ET Kaleidoscope Awards.
Before MPL, he was head of corporate communications at Flipkart, where he helped shape the company’s reputation and launched the owned media platform Flipkart Stories. His earlier roles include director and head, group corporate communications at Vedanta Resources, and senior vice president and head, group corporate communications at Bharti Enterprises.
Sekhar also held leadership positions at Samsung Electronics and global public relations firms Burson Marsteller and Weber Shandwick, working across technology, telecom, consumer and corporate brands.
With over two decades in strategic communications across sectors and geographies, Sekhar now steps into Air India at a pivotal moment, as the airline seeks to rewrite its narrative and reclaim a place among the world’s most admired carriers.
Brands
YES Bank appoints S Anantharaman as chief risk officer
Former Jio Financial Services group chief risk officer takes charge of enterprise-wide risk at the embattled private lender
MUMBAI: YES Bank is not taking chances with risk anymore. The private lender has appointed S Anantharaman as its chief risk officer, a hire that signals the bank’s continued effort to rebuild credibility and tighten the controls that once famously slipped.
Anantharaman arrives from Jio Financial Services, where he served as group chief risk officer and built a risk management architecture spanning lending, payments, insurance broking and asset management from the ground up. Before that, he held the chief risk officer role at Bank of Baroda and senior leadership positions at HDFC Bank and L&T Finance Holdings. Three decades in banking and financial services, in other words, with scars and qualifications to match. He is a chartered accountant and a CFA charterholder.
At YES Bank, his brief is considerable. Anantharaman will oversee the bank’s entire enterprise-wide risk framework, covering credit policy, market risk, operational risk, information security, data governance, analytics, model governance and data privacy. It is, in short, every lever that matters when a bank is trying to prove it has grown up.
YES Bank’s turbulent past needs little rehearsing. What it needs now is exactly what Anantharaman has spent thirty years building: the kind of risk culture that stops problems before they become headlines. The appointment suggests the bank knows it.
