Rakesh Kumar has been recognized with a 2026 Global Recognition Award for his measurable contributions to human resources technology and his exceptional ability to embed artificial intelligence into the operational fabric of enterprise HR, a body of work that places him at the forefront of Innovation in the modern workforce landscape.

Kumar’s career spans more than two decades, beginning as a Process Associate at Genpact in 2001. He advanced through progressively impactful roles at Accenture, EXL, and Deutsche Bank, eventually returning to EXL, where his cumulative tenure totals eighteen years. That progression is not merely a chronicle of promotions, but evidence of a professional who moved steadily toward a singular purpose: replacing outdated, reactive HR systems with intelligent, data-driven architectures capable of scaling with complex global organizations. His current role as Vice President, Level 2, at EXL, where he leads HR technology, AI‑Powered HR Transformation, and HR shared services, represents the culmination of that mission.

What distinguishes Kumar from peers who talk about digital change is that he has delivered it at a measurable scale, supported by concrete outcomes that speak to depth and discipline. Each HR shared service unit he oversees now supports approximately 600 additional employees compared to 2024, a structural expansion made possible not by adding headcount, but by redesigning workflows through automation and standardization. His teams have achieved roughly a 40% improvement in operational efficiency while simultaneously reducing the marginal HR support cost per incremental employee, results that directly reflect the originality and rigor of his approach.

Redefining What HR Operations Can Do

The conventional view of HR as a transactional support function, primarily concerned with processing payroll, managing onboarding paperwork, and fielding employee queries, is precisely what Kumar set out to change, and he did so with a clarity of purpose uncommon at the executive level. He made a deliberate and sustained effort to position HR as a strategic partner capable of influencing enterprise-wide decisions through insight rather than instinct, which required not just new tools but a fundamental rewiring of how HR teams understand their role within a business. Kumar built that capability from within, embedding AI and analytics into engagement models, payroll governance frameworks, and day-to-day operational workflows, so that the shift from reactive to proactive HR became structural rather than superficial.

One of the most operationally significant changes Kumar led was the shift from reactive, email-heavy communication to AI-enabled personalized communication models, which reduced friction in HR interactions and created more consistent employee experiences across a large, distributed workforce. He also led the Oracle HCM implementation at EXL. He developed AI solutions using Microsoft Copilot, with practical deployments that demonstrated technological advancement well beyond the proof-of-concept stage, as these tools were adopted broadly and generated strong user feedback across the organization. The results of these implementations reflect a practitioner who understands that technology earns its place only when the people using it find it genuinely helpful, a standard Kumar has consistently met throughout his tenure at EXL.

Innovation With Structural Depth

Global Recognition Awards evaluates nominees through a rigorous process that includes the Rasch model, a psychometric measurement system that constructs a linear scale across multiple categories, allowing precise comparisons between applicants who may excel in different areas, so that each score reflects a fundamental distinction rather than a relative ranking. Kumar’s evaluation scores reinforce what his career record already demonstrates, since he earned scores of 5, the maximum defined as exceptional or world-class, for novelty and originality of innovation, technological advancement, adoption rate, and user feedback. His market impact and disruption of existing paradigms were each rated at 4, acknowledging significant and still-expanding reach across the enterprise HR space.

That profile reflects an innovator who is not producing novelty for its own sake, but is instead grounded in solving real organizational problems that large enterprises face when attempting to scale HR operations without proportionally scaling costs. Kumar’s approach to shifting decision-making from intuition to evidence, and his commitment to ensuring that AI tools are adopted broadly rather than abandoned after launch, demonstrate a level of strategic coherence that sets him apart from practitioners who treat technology as an end in itself. Each of the major initiatives he has led at EXL provides a structural solution to a persistent business challenge, and his philosophy of building capability rather than creating dependency ensures that the improvements he drives outlast any single project or leadership change.

Final Words

Kumar’s professional history carries a consistency that is rare at the executive level, since he entered the HR field in its most basic operational form, processing insurance policies as an associate at Genpact, and spent two decades acquiring the technical fluency, organizational authority, and strategic vision needed to change how large enterprises manage their workforces. His academic credentials, including a General Management Programme from Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, a Six Sigma Green Belt certification, and Microsoft Certified Professional designations in VB and SQL, reflect a practitioner who invested in cross-functional expertise at a time when that combination was not yet standard in HR leadership. These qualifications, taken together with his professional record, form the foundation of a career that has moved with consistent intent from operational execution to enterprise-level advancement.

A 2026 Global Recognition Award recognizes individuals who have achieved excellence in their fields and done so in ways that are replicable, scalable, and consequential beyond their immediate organizations, and Kumar meets that threshold in full. “Rakesh Kumar exemplifies what it means to lead with vision and execution, and his AI-powered advancement of HR operations represents exactly the kind of world-class innovation that a 2026 Global Recognition Award is designed to honor,” said Alex Sterling, a spokesperson for Global Recognition Awards. Kumar’s work stands as a practical model for HR leaders across industries who recognize that the future of workforce management is not administrative, but intelligent, and that it has already arrived.