Spotlight Interview with Girish Rowjee, Co-Founder & CEO, greytHR

The greytHR Co-founder and CEO discusses customer-led product development, regional localisation, responsible AI and the leadership choices behind scaling a full-suite HRMS.

SPOTLIGHTS & INTERVIEWS

ME-HR & Learning

8/10/20265 min read

Could you tell us about your professional journey and what inspired you to co-found greytHR?

I began my professional journey after studying engineering at SJCE Mysore, with a strong interest in using technology to solve real business problems. When Sayeed Anjum and I co-founded greytHR, many small and growing businesses were managing payroll, compliance, and employee records manually, while the software available to them was often too complex or too expensive.

We started by solving payroll and employee administration well, then kept building around what customers needed. That took us from on-premise software to the cloud in 2011, and over time from a payroll product to a full-suite Hire-to-Retire HRMS covering the complete employee lifecycle.

The same customer-led thinking now guides how we are building greytHR Native AI, to reduce repetitive work and help HR teams act faster. The technology has changed significantly, but our purpose has stayed the same: to make HR simpler, more reliable and more accessible for growing businesses.

Looking back, which three decisions most changed the direction or scale of greytHR?

The first was choosing to solve payroll and compliance deeply before broadening the platform. That gave us a deep understanding of the processes businesses depend on every month, and the trust that comes with getting them right.

The second was moving to the cloud in 2011. That changed both our reach and how we served customers. HR technology became easier to adopt, more scalable, and something we could continuously improve.

The third was expanding beyond India. Growth in the Middle East taught us that a common platform must adapt to different payroll rules, workforce structures, and employee expectations while maintaining simplicity.

These decisions helped shape greytHR into the platform it is today, supporting 34,000+ businesses and 3.5 million+ employees across 30+ countries.

How has your leadership philosophy evolved as greytHR has scaled, and how has that shaped the company's culture?

Much of my leadership learning has come from unlearning the instinct to be the person with the answer. In the early years, staying close to the product and customers helped us move quickly. As greytHR grew, the best decisions increasingly came from teams who understood the customer and were trusted to act.

That shift shaped our culture around trust, ownership, and continuous learning. For me, leadership is now about holding on to purpose while creating room for others to take responsibility.

That trust shows in how people work here: they step beyond their defined roles to solve a customer's problem or move the company forward. Our Great Place to Work certification for the second consecutive year, based on employee feedback, is a meaningful reflection of that culture.

What opportunities do you see for greytHR and the wider HR technology sector in the UAE and Saudi Arabia?

In the UAE and Saudi Arabia, compliance often starts the conversation around HR technology. The larger opportunity, for the whole sector, is to use that foundation to build more connected and better-run people operations.

Our experience in the Middle East since 2008 has taught us that localisation is not translation. Each country has its own wage-protection, social-insurance and end-of-service rules, and they change often – so localisation is not a one-time build but something you maintain, market by market, as the regulations move.

Where we try to be different is in absorbing that complexity so our customers do not have to. The options in this market tend to be either benefits-led or built for large enterprises, which can bring added cost and complexity of their own. Our focus is compliance-first HR and payroll that a growing business can actually adopt and run, with transparent pricing and dependable support.

How are AI, automation and cloud-based platforms changing the role of HR leaders?

As AI and automation take on more of the work, the HR leader's role is shifting from running HR to being accountable for how it runs.

For years, much of HR’s value was tied to processing payroll, chasing information, and keeping records accurate. Cloud connected the information. Automation reduced the repetition. AI can now help complete routine tasks within defined controls.

What remains is the part technology cannot own: deciding what should happen, judging exceptions and being accountable for the outcome. That is where workforce strategy, employee experience and organisational performance really sit.

That is why we are building greytHR Native AI to work within clear permissions, seek confirmation before sensitive actions and maintain an audit trail. The system can take on most of the routine work, while the smaller but critical part, where judgement and accountability matter, stays with a person.

As technology takes on more administrative work, which human skills will become increasingly important for HR professionals?

As technology takes on more routine work, the skills that matter most are those it cannot supply: judgement, empathy and business acumen.

HR professionals will increasingly make decisions where the data is clear, but the human context is not. Human judgement will be needed to interpret that context and weigh the consequences. Empathy and communication will help them explain decisions, manage change and maintain trust. Business acumen will connect workforce decisions to productivity, customer outcomes and long-term growth.

In the Middle East, where workforces are often diverse and distributed, cross-cultural communication and the ability to lead change will be particularly valuable.

AI literacy will become a basic capability, but the real differentiator will be knowing when to question a recommendation, seek more context or intervene. Technology can surface patterns and options. HR must still decide what is fair, practical and right for the organisation and its people.

What are the biggest opportunities and challenges you foresee for greytHR over the next five years?

The most immediate opportunity is to help the many growing businesses still on fragmented HR tools move to one connected, AI-enabled platform that can grow with them. In markets such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, that also means combining scale with strong local payroll and compliance depth.

Much of our key work lies in staying ahead of change. Regulations across these markets keep evolving, and each change has to be understood and reflected accurately, on time, in every market we serve. That is where a large part of our effort goes, and it is work we take on willingly, because it is exactly what customers rely on us to get right.

The real measure of success will be whether we make people operations genuinely simpler to run, while staying close to the problems customers need us to solve.

What advice would you offer entrepreneurs building technology businesses for rapidly changing markets?

Start with a real, recurring customer problem, the kind that keeps coming back and has to be right every time, and then stay close enough to customers that they become collaborators, not just buyers.

Many of greytHR’s capabilities grew from suggestions made by HR teams and payroll processors who were dealing with these challenges in their everyday work. They helped us understand practical constraints, unusual cases, and gaps that would not always be visible from inside the product team.

The lesson is not to build every request. It is to understand the underlying problem, identify the pattern, and turn it into something that creates value for many customers.

As you grow, protect that closeness. Markets will keep changing, and businesses that keep learning alongside their customers are the ones best placed to endure.

For more details visit: GreytHR

Girish’s profile

linkedin.com/in/girishrowjee