Fifty six year-old Atul Sobti has assumed charge as Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Heavy Electricals limited (BHEl), the country’s largest Maharatna public sector engineering and manufacturing enterprise, a release said here on Friday. Prior to this, he was Director on the Board of BHEl, heading two crucial portfolios of Power and Finance.
Earlier, Atul also held additional charge of the post of Director (Engineering, R&D). In addition, he is the Chairman of Raichur Power Corporation limited, a Joint Venture company of BHEl and Karnataka Power Corporation limited. Before his elevation to the Board in December, 2013, he was Executive Director (Power) at BHEl in New Delhi, and was also holding concurrent charge of Industrial Systems Group, a Bengaluru based unit of BHEl.
Significantly, as Director (Power), Sobti was responsible for spearheading and strategising for the Power Sector business of BHEl and under his stewardship, BHEl's power business has achieved major milestones including the highest ever capacity addition/synchronisation of 13,452 mw and 11,941 mw in financial years 2013-14 and 2014-15, respectively. In fact, in fiscal 2014-15, BHEl exceeded Ministry of Power's capacity addition target by 19 per cent. Under his leadership, the trend has continued in the current fiscal (2015-16) and BHEl has already commissioned/synchronised projects of around 8,000 mw, the highest ever in the first nine months of a financial year.
He has been instrumental in strategizing and securing a series of orders from various state utilities including Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and Punjab besides Central Utilities like NTPC and NlC. Sobti is a ‘Mechanical Graduate Engineer’ with Post Graduation in International Management and Diploma in Project Management'.
