I’m Mayank Kulshrestha — an HR leader, writer, and builder who says the quiet part out loud.
For 15+ years I’ve worked inside the machine: hiring, firing, building teams, navigating the politics, and sitting in the rooms where careers are quietly decided. I’ve seen how organisations really work versus how they say they work — across high-growth startups and enterprise-scale companies in India.
Today I run HR operations as AGM–HR at Reliance Retail (Clovia) — recruitment, compliance, performance cycles, and the everyday chaos of operating at Indian retail scale.
From Agra, never waiting for permission
I’m an entrepreneur from Agra. I’ve started ventures, shipped products, and learned the hard way that ideas are cheap and execution is everything. That bias for building runs through all of it — the teams I run, the tools I make, the words I publish.
The writing
I write about HR, careers, and corporate life with an insider’s candour — corporate satire, hard truths about appraisals, exits, and promotions, and the things most people only say off the record. Thousands of readers follow along because it’s honest, specific, and refuses to read like a policy PDF. I’m also at work on my first books — fiction and memoir — and I write poetry in Hindi and Hinglish when the mood takes me.
The building
I build small, working tools for Indian professionals — AI resume building, salary planning, HR analytics. No slideware. If a tool doesn’t actually work and save someone real time, it doesn’t ship. You’ll find them in the AI Lab.
My father
I lost my father, and it changed the shape of everything — how I see work, time, and what actually matters. His absence reshaped our family in ways that are still settling. It taught me that no career milestone replaces presence, and that the people you build for matter more than what you build.
What you’ll find here
- HR insider perspectives — what really happens in appraisal rooms, layoffs, and promotions.
- Career strategy — practical advice for navigating the Indian corporate world.
- The builder’s journey — shipping products alongside a demanding day job.
- Storytelling — personal essays, Hinglish musings, and the occasional uncomfortable truth.
Let’s connect
💼 LinkedIn — 6,400+ followers, DMs open
📸 Instagram
🐦 X (Twitter)