How Wipro’s Splitting HR Leadership for AI with New CHRO

Wipro has appointed a second Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) to handle talent solely for its new AI division. 

This decision allows the group CHRO to focus on managing the remaining 230,000 staff at the US$10bn Indian technology firm.

Priya Jha Choudhary has taken the new role, focusing entirely on the AI-Native Business and Platforms unit. 

Wipro launched this separate operation in April to build and sell standalone AI platforms rather than add gen AI to its legacy services.

Priya is responsible for building and managing this specialised workforce. Her role covers workforce transformation, capability building, talent strategy for AI roles, leadership development, succession, organisational effectiveness and employee experience.

Guiding workforce transformation

The new CHRO is an internal promotion who previously ran HR for the Enterprise Applications global service line at Wipro. 

Priya brings more than two decades of HR experience to the role across Capgemini and earlier technology firms. She also holds a law degree from the London School of Economics.

Her professional background is deliberately broad, spanning talent management, organisational development and HR strategy. This is the exact range of skills a young business unit tends to need to scale effectively.

Wipro is the third-largest IT-services firm in India, behind Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys. 

The firm faces the same hard question as its rivals regarding whether AI grows revenue or quietly devours the traditional billing model.

Splitting the corporate structure

Wipro is treating AI as its own creature, which means giving the unit a separate profit-and-loss account, its own talent needs and its own HR leadership. 

The people building AI-native platforms cannot be run on the template that suits the engineers nursing legacy systems.

Srini Pallia, the CEO and Managing Director of the company, has bet the next phase of Wipro on AI. Srini says the unit lets the company build and scale AI-led platforms at an unprecedented speed and unlock new growth opportunities.

Srini called AI “a new IT services boom” when speaking at Davos in January. He warned that 2026 is the year of “accountability”, when boards finally ask where the returns are. 

Giving the AI arm its own people chief is one answer to this pressure, which serves as a way to line up the talent to deliver those returns.

Human resources teams adapt to new P&L models

Once an AI business runs its own profit-and-loss account, the single-CHRO model starts to strain. A dedicated people chief for the AI arm stops looking unusual and becomes a practical necessity for the firm.

The upside of this corporate restructuring is focus, which allows one leader to own the talent, culture and skills the unit needs. 

The risk of the move is internal division, as AI-native teams want faster decisions and different incentives than a 230,000-person services firm is built to give.

A separate HR chief can provide that agility, but it can also let the two cultures pull apart until resentment sets in. Priya aims to build the talent engine for the AI unit without letting that split harden into a class divide. 

Wipro has bet that AI deserves its own people strategy, and the next year will show whether the partition makes the AI arm faster or just makes the company more divided.