Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, April 2026 — Vasudevan Lakshmanan has stepped into the role of Country HR Head, GSK Malaysia at GSK. His appointment marks an important milestone in his human resources leadership journey and comes after a strong progression through business partnering and regional HR roles within the company. In this new position, he is set to lead the people agenda for GSK’s Malaysia operations as the biopharma company continues its focus on preventing and treating disease through specialty medicines, vaccines, and general medicines.
Before taking on this role, Vasudevan Lakshmanan served at GSK as Regional HR Business Partner – Emerging Markets / International, based in Singapore. In that role, he partnered with HR country heads and senior business leaders to align people priorities with commercial goals across more than 30 diverse markets spanning Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. He also supported large-scale transformation and organizational change initiatives, influenced senior stakeholders across cultures and geographies, and contributed to strategic talent management, succession planning, leadership pipeline development, and cross-border mobility initiatives.
Earlier at GSK, he was Senior HRBP – Vaccines Business, where he led the HR function for the pediatric and adult vaccines business verticals in India. During this period, he played a key role in setting up a new adult vaccines team to support India growth ambitions, partnered with business heads on organizational structure, field force mapping, incentive structures, budgets, benefits, and allowances, and created a talent roadmap that led to the hiring and onboarding of more than 200 colleagues in a short span. He also drove team bonding initiatives and culture transformation efforts to support collaboration, productivity, and the right organizational behaviors.
Prior to that, he worked at GSK as HR Business Partner, where he supported the adult vaccines business and the West Zone sales team in India. In this role, he partnered with senior leaders on team development, led talent review conversations for critical business managers, co-created inclusion and diversity initiatives, managed performance improvement plans, and developed compensation and employee dashboards to support decision-making in HR processes. This phase of his career further strengthened his expertise in HR business partnering, talent management, and organizational development.
Before joining GSK, Vasudevan Lakshmanan built a strong HR foundation at Mahindra Rise, where he held multiple roles including HR Business Partner, Manager HR – OD Project – Org Simplicity, and Manager, GMC Program – Campus Engagement and Talent Development. Across these assignments, he supported the automotive division, digital centers, and multiple business functions, led appraisal exercises, talent categorization, employee engagement initiatives, promotion policy redesign, campus branding, talent development programs, and organizational restructuring projects. He was also part of major organization design and innovation efforts and received multiple recognitions for his contributions.
Earlier in his career, he worked as Assistant Manager at Star India, where he supported operations and relationships for Star Sports, including major event execution for the 2016 Kabaddi World Cup and Pro Kabaddi Season 4. Before that, he began his professional journey at Ashok Leyland as Deputy Manager and earlier as Graduate Engineer Trainee, gaining experience across sales initiatives, dealer planning, training, manufacturing exposure, and process improvement. Vasudevan Lakshmanan holds an MBA in HRM from XLRI Jamshedpur, which has complemented his broad experience across HR strategy, talent development, and business transformation.
His appointment as Country HR Head, GSK Malaysia reflects a career defined by strong progression across people strategy, talent management, transformation, inclusion and diversity, and regional HR leadership. With experience spanning India, Singapore, and now Malaysia, he brings a well-rounded international HR perspective to this important leadership role at GSK.
About GSK
GSK is a focused biopharma company working to prevent and treat disease through specialty medicines, vaccines, and general medicines. The company is pursuing research and development across four core therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases.
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