Amway India's Arjun Dasoondi Features in India's Top 100 Great People Managers

Research skills are understandably the top priority for any leader in the R&D space. However, Arjun Dasoondi, Associate Vice President in Innovation and Science at Amway India and a winning people manager in the Forbes List of India’s Top 100 Great People Managers has been both a sound technical leader and a Great People Manager.

Arjun Dasoondi, Associate Vice President in Innovation and Science, Amway India 

Great Manager Institute recently released its report on the core reasons that helped Arjun feature in the list.

“Managers usually shy away from recognizing employees or having developmental conversations with them. Arjun, however, has taken initiatives on team’s career development, wherein he spends time with his team understanding what motivates them to give their best. He has built the work culture of mutual trust, empowerment and focused on employees’ strengths. He takes out time to coach and mentor team members rather than micromanaging them on their work. He leverages opportunity to recognize his team’s efforts and rewards them appropriately on different platforms."

In the article on ‘What sets Great People Managers apart?’ covered in Forbes India, the common thread connecting all the 100 winners is their ability to build authentic relationships. This takes even more prominence given the changing business environment.

Today thousands of people managers across the world grapple with remote-working challenges. However, remote isn’t new to Arjun. He has been managing team members functioning out of remote locations. A team member comments, “While managing me remotely, Arjun ensures that he is available for me at the times when I need his support. He treats us fairly and spends time knowing our day-to-day happenings.”

His people management practices have not just resulted in happy team members, but successful business results too. Arjun’s developmental practices have been instrumental in his team delivering the fastest product launches, supporting green field manufacturing plant projects and technology transfer to various contract manufacturing sites put him in the global spotlight.

According to Arjun, there’s much beyond the tangible benefits, “For me the major intangible benefit is that across functions - Marketing, Operations, Supply Chain and Regulatory, define us as a solution provider and a business value builder. In the Innovation and Science functions, our process and package engineering teams are well recognized for delivering results in the most critical situations.”

Arjun has received several awards for his efforts including Significant Contributor, Most Valuable Project and Global R&D Annual Award and he has been into Amway’s Top Talent Group for multiple years. His research work publication has been awarded as the best paper publication of the year.

He collaborates closely across diverse cultural setups and geographies including USA, Europe, UK and China.

Arjun defines his leadership style briefly as ‘Lead with Heart, Live to Serve and Love to Learn’. Arjun has undergone the Amway Leadership Program from Davenport University, Grand Rapid, MI, in partnership with Harvard Business Publishing. He is currently pursuing management program from Indian Institute of Management, Indore, is testimony of his passion and love to learn.

He has worked with leading names in the pharmaceutical industry. When he isn’t working, Arjun is a voracious reader and boasts a personal library of 500 books, including some of the finest collections on management and leadership. He is a fitness enthusiast, marathon runner and a volunteer at the Art of Living organization.

Great Manager Institute annually conducts the Great People Manager Study, the largest study of its kind, in partnership with Forbes India, which culminates in the recognition of top 100 people managers who show exemplary leadership of their teams. Arjun is a recipient of this award this year. In 2020, the study witnessed participation from 1,158 organizations spread across 24 industries and 6,344 managers were assessed. The list has names of CEOs as well as first-time managers. The winners of this list will be celebrated through an award ceremony in the month of November, informed Great Manager Institute in a statement.

For the full list, visit here or the website of Forbes India.