The organisations that will thrive in the next decade are not just investing in technology or strategy. They are investing in people leaders who understand the business as deeply as they understand people. That shift is already underway, and Arun Leslie George,
President and CHRO of Coromandel International Limited, one of India’s largest
agri-input companies and a recent inductee into , is one of the leaders defining what it looks like in practice.
Over three decades within the Murugappa Group, Arun has led HR across multiple business units, worked on group strategy and restructuring, turned around the Super Phosphate business and headed Retail before returning to HR at the most senior level. That journey is not just a career timeline. It is the lens through which he approaches every people decision today.
Step outside the HR function to lead it better
Most HR leaders build their careers by going deeper into the function. Arun Leslie George went in the opposite direction. “Very early in my career, I made a conscious effort to learn beyond HR and understand the business deeply,” he reflects. “I have always believed in being a student of the game.” In his early years, that meant visiting the factory on Sundays simply to learn something new. It also meant living by one principle above all others. “I followed one simple principle; never say no to an opportunity, however challenging it seemed.”
That openness took him far outside his comfort zone. A Group-level role working on strategy, value chain architecture and portfolio review gave him a strategic lens on the business that HR alone could not have provided. Then came the defining test: being asked to lead the Super Phosphate business, which had been loss-making for several years. For the first time, he was directly accountable for a P&L. “Managing business strategy, operations, finance and people on a daily basis accelerated my learning tremendously,” he notes. After turning that business around, leading the Retail function sharpened his understanding of customers and markets further.
Those experiences reshaped how he thinks about the CHRO role entirely. “As a CHRO, I believe the role is not just about facilitating processes, but about taking ownership and driving outcomes from a people perspective,” he believes. The message he gives his team consistently flows from the same conviction. “Learn the business deeply, because once you understand the business, your value as a partner increases exponentially.”
For Arun, this is not aspirational advice. It is a principle he has stress-tested across roles and business cycles. “Almost every people decision is ultimately a business decision,” he points out. “People decisions deserve the same seriousness as any major business investment.” And just as he learned to identify a few critical priorities and pursue them with discipline when running a business, he applies that same focus to HR. The function, in his view, works best when it is anchored in business impact rather than process for its own sake.
Embed purpose into your peoples’ lived experience at work
Coromandel’s mission, to enhance the prosperity of farmers through quality farm solutions, could easily remain a statement on a wall. Arun is deliberate about ensuring it does not. “Purpose cannot remain a communication exercise,” he emphasizes. “Employees have to experience it first-hand.”
The organisation runs an initiative called Sense of Purpose, where employees spend time directly with farmers and dealers, understanding their realities from the ground up. The impact, Arun notes, is visible. Employees begin to see that even decisions taken far from the field can meaningfully affect a farmer’s livelihood. To make purpose operational rather than aspirational, Coromandel also embeds farmer and customer insights into team and individual goals through its Balanced Score Card framework.
Cross-functional initiatives reinforce this further. Employees regularly work across functions, whether in product innovation, digital solutions or sustainability initiatives, giving them a broader understanding of the farmer’s journey and the value chain as a whole. Recognition and storytelling play an equally important role, with stories of employee contributions that positively impact farmers shared regularly across the organisation.
But Arun is clear that the most important driver is leadership behaviour. “Employees closely observe what leadership prioritises through decisions, communication and on-ground presence. When they see that impact on farmers remains central to the business, purpose becomes something they genuinely own rather than something they simply hear about,” he adds.
Adopt AI fully, but protect what makes leadership human
On artificial intelligence reshaping HR, Arun takes a position that is practical rather than cautious. “I believe AI should be embraced fully because, when used well, it can take over repetitive tasks and free people to focus on higher value contributions,” he shares. At Coromandel, this thinking is already in motion. The company’s Gromor app integrates digital farming solutions with its retail network, offering farm-specific advisory, weather inputs, image-based pest and disease detection, remote agronomy support, drone spraying and more. In HR, the approach is equally practical: actively identifying areas where AI can either perform better than humans or significantly improve efficiency, and adopting it there without hesitation.
Where Arun draws the line is equally clear. “AI is extremely effective at analysing data and generating options, but contextual judgement, empathy, trust building and understanding human emotions are very different capabilities,” he notes. In a sensitive conversation, a
leader is not just responding to words. They are sensing hesitation, reading emotions, understanding context and deciding what not to say as much as what to say. That remains beyond what technology can replicate. His overall framing is an optimistic one. “I see AI as fundamentally pro-human. The real opportunity is to leverage its strengths while allowing people to focus more on creativity, relationships, judgement and strategic thinking,” he says.
Build trust first, transformation follows
India’s agri-input sector is changing rapidly, with digital farming, sustainability pressures and a younger rural workforce all reshaping what organisations need to look like internally. “Coromandel is also evolving into a more agile, knowledge driven and farmer centric organisation,” Arun shares. His vision for its culture reflects that ambition. “My vision is to build an organisation that combines strong execution with continuous learning, adaptability and a deep sense of purpose.”
Achieving that depends less on programmes and more on how leaders behave day to day. Transparency, respect and open dialogue are not soft ideals for Arun. They are practical tools for building the trust that makes change possible. “People embrace change far more positively when they feel heard, aligned and connected to a common purpose,” he adds.
Coromandel’s recognition among is, for Arun, a starting point. His focus remains on building a high performance culture that stays future ready while remaining deeply connected to farmers and the larger agri ecosystem. As he puts it, the goal is an organisation that combines strong execution with continuous learning, adaptability and a deep sense of purpose.