From HR Executive at Casino Pride to CHRO at The Hosteller and now Vice President & Head of HR at Uniliv. That's a decade of building people functions in some of India's most demanding multi-location businesses.
Suraj Shiva Vaigankar has been appointed Vice President & Head of HR at Uniliv.
His journey reflects deep expertise in talent acquisition, employee engagement, compliance, workforce transformation, and HR operations across hospitality and consumer-facing businesses.
He began his career in Goa's hospitality sector, building hands-on experience across recruitment, payroll, employee relations, statutory compliance, onboarding, and HR operations. Over the years, he held leadership roles across casino pride, Big Daddy Chain of Casinos, Golden Globe Hotels Private Limited, KSP Clubs, Travelpack India, and Queen of Hearts Fun Casino, steadily expanding his scope across hospitality and service environments.
The defining phase of his career came at The Hosteller.
Starting as Senior HR Manager and later becoming CHRO, he led HR operations across 70+ locations nationwide. Under his leadership, the company built a 100% in-house recruitment model, hired 700+ employees in under two years, reduced attrition from 12% to 5%, managed monthly payrolls exceeding ₹4.5 crore, and strengthened performance management, rewards, compliance, and leadership hiring processes.
Now at Uniliv, he will lead people strategy, talent development, organizational growth, and culture-building initiatives as the company enters its next phase of scale.
What stands out is his ground-up HR journey. From frontline HR operations to leading people strategy for rapidly expanding organizations, he has built expertise in solving workforce challenges where hiring speed, retention, compliance, and business continuity are critical.
At Boardroom CXO, we're increasingly seeing high-growth consumer and hospitality companies prioritize HR leaders with proven experience in multi-location workforce management, attrition reduction, and large-scale talent acquisition. As businesses scale, operational HR execution is becoming as important as strategic HR leadership.
We run an invite-only CXO community where HR, talent, and business leaders discuss workforce transformation, culture building, employee engagement, and scaling people functions in fast-growing organizations. Interested? DM us.
For HR leaders: What's harder today, reducing attrition across distributed frontline workforces or building an in-house recruitment engine that can scale hiring without compromising quality?
First published on the Boardroom CXO LinkedIn page on 18 June 2026. To correct or remove it, write to [email protected].
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