Leadership
The two people who started it
An institute is an argument about what education is for. These are the founders making it, in their own words rather than in a biography written around them.
- Founded
- 2005
- Centres
- 13
- Mentors
- 11
01Co-Founder & Director
Dr. Ankit Kumar
Founded AORE to put retail training within reach of people who do not live near a metro campus. His work sits at the intersection of retail operations and human resources — a doctorate in both, a counselling qualification, and two decades of building training programmes that are judged on whether people get hired.
The retail sector in India is expanding faster than it can staff itself.
Global brands are opening stores in cities that had none five years ago, and the shortage is not of people — it is of trained people. AORE exists to close that gap, and to close it for candidates in small towns and rural districts as readily as for those in Delhi or Mumbai. Quality education should not require relocation. What we set out to build is not a certificate mill but a route: an honest assessment of where someone stands, training that reflects what the floor actually demands, mentors who have run the stores our students want to manage, and a placement cell that treats a hire as the outcome rather than the enrolment. Learning does not end at certification, and neither does our involvement.
- Role
- Co-Founder & Director
- Specialisms
- Retail HR · Training · Career counselling
Credentials
MA · PGDBM (HR) · NLP Practitioner · Certified Trainer (ISTD) · Ph.D in Retail & HR · PGD in Psychological Counselling
02Co-Founder, Director of HR & Training
Shweta Sharma
Runs training and the HR function across AORE and AOne HR Services, the placement partner. Spends most of her time on the two ends of the pipeline that matter — what employers are actually asking for this quarter, and whether a candidate is ready to be sent to them.
Retail has changed more in the last decade than in the three before it.
Consumer behaviour moved online and then partly back again; digital transformation reshaped what a store is for. Training has to keep pace with that, which means it has to be flexible enough for someone already working a six-day week, and practical enough to be useful on Monday morning. That is why our programmes pair theory with hands-on work, why mentors are practitioners rather than lecturers, and why placement support is built in rather than promised. Education is not preparation for life; it is life itself.
- Role
- Co-Founder, Director of HR & Training
- Also
- AOne HR Services
- Specialisms
- Retail HR · Placement · Training
Credentials
MBA-HR · Senior Certified Trainer (ISTD) · Retail HR Function Expert
Next
The people who teach
Eleven mentors with a combined two centuries of retail between them — from a 32-year Bata career to two decades of operations across the Gulf.