With billions of dollars being pumped into various sectors that Reliance and Adani operate in, along with very ambitious plans, both the groups are understandably compelled to hold on to human talent. 
Special 
With billions of dollars being pumped into various sectors that Reliance and Adani operate in, along with very ambitious plans, both the groups are understandably compelled to hold on to human talent. The decision of India’s two largest business groups, Reliance Industries and Adani, to enter into a “no-poaching” pact has been interesting in many ways. As things stand, both the behemoths, strictly speaking, are not in direct confrontation with each other. However, recent announcements by both will now lead to them competing, with renewable energy and petrochemicals businesses being the obvious battle grounds.
The concept of no-poaching is not new to India Inc. In fact, it has had several large organisations getting into some form of an informal agreement not to pick up talent from one another. HR consultants speak of an “implicit understanding” that always existed between Pepsi and Coca-Cola, Infosys and Wipro, Hindustan Unilever and ITC to name a few. With time as more sectors start to take shape in India, the demand for talent along with the need for specialised skills has taken off quite sharply. With billions of dollars being pumped into various sectors that Reliance and Adani operate in, along with very ambitious plans, both the groups are understandably compelled to hold on to their biggest resource – human talent.
According to Bhavishya Sharma, MD, Athena Executive Search & Consulting, the mobile business always looked at FMCG majors for talent, while the latter sourced from retail. “In the case of Reliance and Adani, one is speaking of very large businesses with scale. Here, talent is always hard to come by and poaching from one another only hurts the ecosystem,” he says.
In many ways, for both these large groups, the foray into big-ticket areas has been most obvious in the last decade – be it a bigger thrust into oil and gas or petrochemicals, power transmission, road construction, ports, airports, gas distribution, cement, retail, FMCG, renewable energy among others. On just the core infrastructure businesses, Sharma estimates the demand for talent has gone up 5x-10x on a frenetic growth story that often sees doubling of revenues each year. “While the two groups may not be in direct conflict in most businesses, what they want to avoid is a conflict of talent. They recognise that there is not enough fresh talent and demand-supply mismatch is avoidable.”
One head of an executive search firm, who has worked with both the groups at various points in time, thinks the renewable energy ambitions could be a reason or for matter Adani’s decision to enter petrochemicals (announced last July and an industry where Reliance has a dominant position) to not poach from each other. “All this is rarely put in writing and is implicit in nature,” he says. By the looks of it, the story on talent is not done yet. Not anytime now.
Also read: Gautam Adani beats Mukesh Ambani to secure the top spot in IIFL-Hurun’s Richest Indian List
Also read: Adani and Ambani only Indians in world's top-10 rich list: Here's what their net worth can do
Copyright©2025 Living Media India Limited. For reprint rights: Syndications Today
