Manish Sabharwal
Updated: Oct 20
Manish Sabharwal is one of India’s leading entrepreneurs, institution-builders and public-policy thinkers, with nearly three decades of experience at the intersection of business, employment, education, skills and economic policy. He is the Co-founder of TeamLease Services, which he helped build from a pioneering staffing start-up in 2002 into one of India’s leading workforce-solutions companies.
Before TeamLease, Sabharwal co-founded India Life, a payroll and pension-services company, in 1996. India Life was acquired by NYSE-listed Hewitt Associates in 2002, following which Sabharwal became CEO of Hewitt Outsourcing (Asia), based in Singapore. He subsequently returned to India and co-founded TeamLease, bringing his experience in human resources and outsourcing to the challenge of creating formal employment at scale.
Over more than two decades, Sabharwal has been instrumental in taking TeamLease from a start-up to an organisation serving more than 350,000 employees and over 3,500 clients across 28 states. TeamLease has also been involved in implementing India's first vocational university and a national public-private partnership apprenticeship programme. He has been a strong advocate of formal employment, labour-market reform, apprenticeships, employability and the integration of education with the needs of industry.
Sabharwal has had an unusually extensive engagement with public policy for a private-sector entrepreneur. He has served as an Independent Director on the Board of the Reserve Bank of India and has been associated with the National Skill Development Mission, the Central Advisory Board of Education, and several government policy committees dealing with education, employment and employability. He has also served on the Advisory Board of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) and is a Governing Board member of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER).
He has also been closely associated with the New India Foundation, where he serves as Managing Trustee. The Foundation supports fellowships for scholars and writers documenting and examining India's post-Independence history.
Sabharwal is widely recognised as a public intellectual and commentator on India's economic transformation. He is a long-standing columnist for The Indian Express, writing extensively on employment, education, regulation, entrepreneurship, labour reform, economic growth and India's institutional development.
Sabharwal has been recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, placing him among the Forum's recognised emerging leaders in business and public affairs. He has also been recognised by the Schwab Foundation as an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur. He also serves on the boards of Ashoka University, Neev Academy and New India Foundation. He is co-author of Made in India: The Story of Desh Bandhu Gupta, Lupin and Indian Pharma, a supporting author of Kashmir Under 370.
Sabharwal is an alumnus of Mayo College, Ajmer and Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi, and holds an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Manish Sabharwal's distinction lies in the unusual combination of three roles: he is a successful entrepreneur who built a large employment institution; a policy practitioner who has contributed to national institutions dealing with skills, education, finance and economic policy; and a public intellectual who has consistently shaped the Indian conversation around jobs, human capital, regulation and economic growth.
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