About us

Our solutions are based on our core belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Teams and organizations that want to realize the true potential of the truth in the Gestalt Theory can do so, provided they get critical organizational aspects right – Strategy, Structure, and Systems – the 3S model that Daksada works on. Our capability is built around this 3S Model to deliver value to our clients by helping them develop these all-important facets.

Our mission is to be the preferred partner to business leaders to getting these critical fundamentals institutionalized, in order for these businesses to achieve their true potential in terms of growth, profitability, and success.

Our unique Partner’s Framework makes us one of the few business consultants in the UAE who bring multiple subject matter experts together to collaborate and work towards addressing a customer challenge or maximizing an available innovation opportunity.  We deliver best in class solutions by applying the wisdom of the collective to define a specifically crafted solution, and backing it with world-class execution, we offer businesses the opportunity to transform themselves and reset their trajectory onto the growth path.

Our experienced team of partners cumulatively bring 150+ years of hands-on experience in their respective fields – not many other business consultants in the UAE present such a strong field of industry veterans. As senior professionals who have impacted the growth in organizations across industries, we understand the drivers of growth in the Middle East markets and the cultural levers that facilitate the same.

Simply put, Daksada’s purpose is to close the ‘skill’ or ‘competency’ gap in organizations. This purpose is best explained by our name itself:

’Daks’ ( /daksh/ ) means ‘skill or ability’,

and ‘Da’ ( /da/ ) means ‘to give’

We work with companies who are setting the stage for their next growth leap through a transformation mindset. As business consultants in the UAE, we partner in the process of transformation by offering a choice on the form of engagement – as a consultant, advisor, implementation partner, or a combination thereof. Further, we offer engagements at a flat fee, time-cost basis, milestone based, result based, or a convenient meld of these. We partner with clients over the long term, staying committed till they achieve their goals, and even linking some of our fees to the benefits our clients realize.

Talent Management

Our Talent Management practice team supports businesses in selection of the right talent who will not only fit the job description but contribute to the organisation’s culture and therefore be a high potential asset for driving growth. We have over a decade of experience in bringing the ideal talent at all levels in the organization – operations, managerial and leadership, across functional expertise.


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People Practice

Our People Practice team offers a holistic or project-based solution to the HR needs of a growing company. These span the requirements from crafting a talent strategy to setting up the HR practices, policies, and processes for the organization. We also support organizations in developing organizational competency maps, HiPo (High Potential) planning and development, compensation and variable payment plans, etc. For SMEs we offer comprehensive outsourced HR management services and 5-year business transformation partnerships.

Learning & Development

Our Learning & Development practice team mission is to support businesses with result-driven developmental paths. We offer award winning learning journeys, that have proven impact on increased productivity and engagement in teams. We have access to world-class training content and protocols that can be tailored to specific needs or used as is, to augment skills, gauge and align aptitude or attitude, broaden strategic thinking and leadership capabilities.

To reiterate, our happy customers are business leaders those who have leveraged the benefits of working with a multi-disciplinary team of experts to support them on their business challenges or transformational journeys. 

As uniquely placed business consultants in the UAE, we bring our core belief to bear the most when two or more practices combine to provide wholistic solutions for clients – truly making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Our diagnostic, solution design, and implementation processes follow best practices, and are delivered by project teams with a practice lead who takes complete ownership for the engagement. This is backed by our internal systems and processes which facilitate teams from various practices coming together to offer customers a seamless, integrated, and wholistic solution. 

Want to know more about us? Call us for a meeting

Talent Management

Led by the passionate and indomitable Ruth Fernandes, the Daksada Talent Management Team has the distinction of being one of the few Executive Search firms in the UAE to have placed a good number of people at senior management roles across the Middle East markets. If you doubt our claim, simply ask your colleagues if they know Ruth. We would be genuinely surprised if they haven’t heard of her.

Ruth is ably partnered by Amreen Khan, Lorraine Fernandez, and Saikat Mukherjee, who together bring in ~45 years of enthusiasm (on top of Ruth’s 30 years in the business) in their always-on quest to connect the dots and find happiness for the candidate and the hiring managers. Drop-in for a coffee (or tea if you prefer) and witness firsthand the dedication and guidance Ruth provides to the team, fostering an environment of mentorship and growth – you will always find the room filled with conversation and a free exchange of ideas.

As a talent agency in the UAE, the team carries a reputation for their due diligence in matching the job description and the candidate’s profile with the filter of the individual personality and organizational culture to deliver the best match-up. There are no set of numbers or statistics that will tell the story better than the fact that people placed through Daksada seem to have worked longer at companies and perhaps grown faster than their peers. Feel free to inquire, and we can share countless anecdotes that support this claim. Unlike many other recruitment agencies based in Dubai, the Talent Management Team has responded to a diverse variety of mandates through their personal understanding of the company culture, hiring manager’s needs and the expectations of the candidates. The team has helped staff operations for companies interested in setting up a base in the UAE to cater to the latent demand in the MENA region.

Executive Search and Selection

CXO Talent Sourcing

Contingency-based Recruitment

Compensation & Benefits Studies

Market Intelligence /Mapping

Outplacement

Career Transitioning

Career Transitioning

Multiple Sectors & Industry Verticals: Banks & Financial Services • Manufacturing • Trading • Supply Chain • Warehousing • Consumer Goods • Consumer Packaged Goods • Durables • Automobiles & Personal Transportation • Oil & Gas and other Energy Providers • Publications and Content Creators • Fashion • Technology and Personal Electronics • Retail • E-Commerce • Educational Institutions • SMEs • Family Owned Groups • Regional Businesses • Multi-National Companies

  • Government & Quasi-Government organizations

Given below are the various sub-specializations that the Daksada Talent Management Team brings to the table to be able to deliver to our customer’s needs.

Job Descriptions

Competency mapping

Career Coaching

Interview preparation

Market Intelligence

Competency assessment 

Career Counselling

LinkedIn Profile Development

Market Mapping

Competency-based Interviewing

 

CV Writing

 

People Practice

Our People Practice is led by two industry veterans who complements each other like the Yin and Yang. Muthukrishna Moorthi from the southern part of India readily acknowledges that Leon Mendonsa, who traces his roots to Mumbai, is the perfect counterfoil to his style and personality. Together they create a formidable team of combined and balanced experience and expertise, who can take on any other team of Human Resource consultants with their ability to tailor-make solutions.

Given that it is people that the eponymous ‘People Practice’ team deals with, People are at the very centre of all solutions and interventions. Our approach is rooted in running a diagnostic, then testing our hypothesis through data, research, and by speaking to key stakeholders so that the solution arrived at is anchored in the organizational culture. More importantly, the elegance of the solution lies in the fact that it is based on a deep understanding of human behaviour, backed by years of hands-on experience with large, diverse organizations. The People Practice team brings rigor to the process and depth of the solution, reflecting contemporary best practices and the use of the latest tools, technology, and methodologies, and set themselves apart from the average HR consultant.

We follow an approach that allows us to understand the client organization through a structured diagnostic process. Our experts then work with the business to identify solutions and deliver recommendations and an implementation approach. Finally, we partner with the business to implement the recommendations using a Build – Operate – Transfer (BOT) model. We continue our interactions through the implementation phase, ensuring that we institutionalize the change and revised processes to ensure that the change is lasting and sustainable.

This is a significantly inclusive approach where we work closely with the business teams, engaging with them continuously through the project lifecycle. The BOT model allows us to partner in the implementation, require us to demonstrate results through measurable progress on agreed KPIs, and ensuring a handover to the business team for continuity.

As comprehensive Human Resource Consultants, we passionately believe in supporting business transformation, and can help businesses with developing a Business Strategy, and our Business Transformation Model can support comprehensive business process reengineering projects that deliver efficiencies in terms of lead time, costs, and inventory.

To further enable organizations deliver against their business strategy, we can support and deliver complete employee life cycle processes including

  • HR Strategy and HR Department Set-up • Organization Design to support business growth and transformation • Enabling a Culture of High Performance • Compensation & Benefits and Reward/Recognition processes that integrate with performance management systems • drafting HR Policies and Procedures • Career & Succession Planning processes • Talent Acquisition and Management • L&D strategy • Competency Frameworks • Human Capital Planning • Employee Engagement & Retention • Coaching & Mentoring

HR Strategy and HR Department Set-up

Organization Design to support business growth and transformation

Enabling a Culture of High Performance

Compensation & Benefits and Reward/Recognition processes that integrate with performance management systems

Drafting HR Policies and Procedures • Career & Succession Planning processes

L&D strategy

Competency Frameworks

Human Capital Planning

Employee Engagement & Retention

Coaching & Mentoring

Multiple Sectors & Industry Verticals: Banks & Financial Services • Manufacturing • Trading • Supply Chain • Warehousing • Consumer Goods • Consumer Packaged Goods • Durables • Automobiles & Personal Transportation • Oil & Gas and other Energy Providers • Publications and Content Creators • Fashion • Technology and Personal Electronics • Retail • E-Commerce • Educational Institutions • SMEs • Family Owned Groups • Regional Businesses • Multi-National Companies

  • Government & Quasi-Government organisations

Given below are the many sub-specializations that the Daksada People Practice Team brings to the table to be able to deliver to our customer’s needs.

Business Strategy

Business Planning

Setting up of HR function

Total Rewards

Talent Management

Organizational Performance

Organization Development

Risk & Compliance

HR Outsourcing

Outplacement Services

Employee Engagement

Corporate Governance Frameworks

Learning & Development

The Learning & Development team comprises two gentlemen who, not so long ago, partnered while at opposite sides of the table. Hari Sutha Raj Pillai, (who also wears multiple hats as the CEO at Daksada), is a veteran of the learning and development space having worked as an external consultant and delivered bespoke training programmes to many companies through his career. His partner, Anand VS, spent a significant part of his career in Banking & Finance and then made the change to Daksada, been drawn to the entrepreneurial spirit. He has enjoyed a highly impactful stint at one of UAE’s leading banks at the head of Learning & Development, Retail Banking, and Wealth Management functions. The difference in the way they work now is simple…today both sit on the same side of the table.

Marketing Solutions

  • Brand Strategy • Creative Development • Packaging Design & Development • Customer Acquisition
  • Campaign Management • Content Strategy & Management
  • Social Media Platform Strategy & Management • Website and Application Development
  • Analytics & Reporting • Outsourced Marketing Solutions

 

Multiple Sectors & Industry Verticals: Banks & Financial Services • Manufacturing • Trading • Supply Chain • Warehousing • Consumer Goods • Consumer Packaged Goods • Durables • Automobiles & Personal Transportation • Publications and Content Creators • Technology and Personal Electronics • Retail • E-Commerce • Educational Institutions • SMEs • Family Owned Groups • Regional Businesses • Multi-National Companies • Government & Quasi-Government organisations

 

Given below are the many sub-specializations that the Daksada Marketing Services Team brings to the table to be able to deliver to our customer’s needs. 



Brand Strategy

Creative Development

Search Engine Marketing

Events – 1:few, 1:many

Direct Mailers

Website Development

Display Campaigns

Mass Media Campaigns

Website Analytics

Packaging Development

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

E-Mail Marketing

Content Strategy

Campaign Management

SMS Marketing

Public Relations

Social Media Platform Analytics

Internal Communications