Shruti Nishchal leaves Netflix to join OpenAI as hr business partner for Asia-Pacific

SINGAPORE: Out of streaming, into artificial intelligence. Shruti Nishchal has swapped one of the world’s best-known entertainment brands for one of its most closely watched technology companies. In October 2026 the hr professional began a new job as hr business partner, APAC, at OpenAI, based in Singapore.

It is a well-timed move. Technology, and the way people work with it, is changing at dizzying speed, and few employers sit nearer the centre of that change than OpenAI. Nishchal, who has more than 14 years of experience in fast-paced, high-growth Indian and multinational organisations, says she is “grateful” to carry the lessons of an “incredibly meaningful journey” at Netflix into the new chapter.

That journey was long and steep. Nishchal spent 6 years and 5 months at Netflix, joining in June 2020 as a human resources business partner in Mumbai. In August 2023 she moved to Singapore as senior manager, hr business partner for product, legal and finance in APAC, a post she held until December 2025. In January 2026 she was promoted to director, hr business partner for ads, marketing and partnerships in APAC, a role she kept until October 2026. Few careers show such a clean climb: three roles, two countries and a steadily widening brief.

The Netflix years capped a career built across some of India’s best-known employers. At Qualcomm, over 5 years and 6 months, Nishchal wore three hats. She was lead hr business partner for Qualcomm India’s business teams and the Noida technology centre (November 2014 to April 2020), talent development partner for the software technology and business organisations (June 2017 to April 2020) and diversity and inclusion lead for India (July 2019 to April 2020).

Earlier, she was senior manager for talent and organisation development at Axis Bank in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (January 2013 to October 2014). Before that she was assistant manager for learning and development at Titan Industries in the Greater Bengaluru Area (May 2011 to January 2013), where she was the retail learning and development manager for the watches business unit. She began as a management trainee in the human resources development programme at Tata Sons (June 2010 to May 2011).

The foundations were laid early. As a summer intern at Ernst and Young (April to June 2009), she got her first taste of corporate life. In a live project at PepsiCo (July to August 2008) she analysed the company’s employer-branding strategy across tier 1 B-schools and suggested ways to align Pepsi’s branding model with the parameters undergraduates use when ranking top recruiters.

Her stated strengths read like a map of modern hr: business partnering, diversity and inclusion, performance excellence, talent management, talent process automation, succession planning, leadership development, organisation design and mergers and acquisitions. Each matters more as companies race to hire, retain and organise people around fast-moving technology. For OpenAI, which is growing in Asia-Pacific, a leader who has spent years partnering with product, finance, legal and advertising teams is a sensible hire.

The wider lesson is that the people function is moving closer to the heart of technology businesses. Nishchal’s path, from retail learning to bank talent management, from Indian technology centres to a regional directorship, shows how broad experience prepares hr leaders for such moments. Her arrival at OpenAI suggests both sides see the road ahead as one of rapid, shared change.