Empathy refers to the special human skill that enables one to imagine and fully appreciate the feelings, thoughts and experience of another person as if they were one's own. Traditionally, empathy has been taken as a “soft” skill, often perceived as a skill that could not be accommodated with intensive demands of the corporate world where performance requirements are the driving force and where much focus is given to productivity. However, the last three decades have presented a confluence of crises that have shattered this old paradigm of empathy that relegated it to secondary importance. A new view is emerging: the only durable competitive advantage is perhaps the uniquely human capacity for connection, understanding, and complex problem solving.   In this article, it is posited that empathy is no longer merely a personality trait to be hired for; rather, it is a cognitive business strategy to be operationalised. Just like so-called “hard skills”, empathy is a performance tool that leads to measurable returns in innovation, retention, and crisis resilience. The paper also examines the human-centric frameworks that arise in the Indian business ethos namely principles of Dharma (duty) and Seva (service) using the examples of Tata Group and HCL Technologies.