Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, March 2026 — Mobily (Etihad Etisalat) has welcomed Sharmilaa Thakur as Chief People Officer, where she will also serve as People & Culture Head for India, Egypt, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). In this role, she will lead the organization’s people strategy across multiple geographies, focusing on strengthening leadership pipelines, embedding digital HR capabilities, and aligning culture and performance to support the company’s ambitious growth agenda.
At Mobily, Thakur is spearheading the digital transformation of HR by embedding analytics-driven decision-making across the organization. She is also driving the development of a future-ready talent architecture designed to support the company’s long-term growth strategy across India and the Middle East while fostering a unified culture and high-performance environment across diverse markets.
Prior to joining Mobily, Thakur served as People and Culture Head – India at SitusAMC, where she led HR strategy and organizational development initiatives for the company’s India operations. Her leadership focused on strengthening talent frameworks, enhancing employee engagement, and aligning people capabilities with the organization’s evolving business priorities.
Earlier, she served in an Advisory role at PepsiCo, contributing to strategic HR initiatives and providing guidance on people transformation and organizational development. She previously spent nearly a decade with Bureau Veritas Consumer Products Services, where she served as HR Leader and Head of Human Capital, leading global HR strategies, performance development programs, and leadership hiring while overseeing talent initiatives across multiple geographies.
Before that, Thakur held leadership positions including Director HR at PepsiCo, Head of HR at Assigncorp, and Head of HR at HP, where she played a key role in driving organizational development, performance management frameworks, leadership capability building, and employee engagement initiatives across international teams. She began her career with Cincom Systems as Senior Manager HR, where she helped establish performance management frameworks and talent development programs.
With extensive global experience spanning technology, consulting, telecommunications, and professional services, Sharmilaa Thakur brings deep expertise in strategic HR leadership, digital transformation, organizational development, and culture transformation.
She holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration (PGDBA) in Human Resources and Finance from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies and has completed a Management Development Program in Business Analytics for Strategic and Tactical Decision Making from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.
About Mobily
Mobily (Etihad Etisalat) is a Saudi telecommunications company that launched commercially in May 2005. The company provides integrated telecom and digital services across three main sectors—individuals, businesses, and carriers. Mobily operates one of the largest wireless networks by coverage in Saudi Arabia and the wider region, alongside one of the most extensive fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks and one of the world’s largest data center infrastructures.
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