Growth Engineer

Ravi Uppal, Managing Director & CEO, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL), has more reasons to be in the news. His company has commissioned the country´s largest billet caster plant at Angul in Odisha, that too within a record time of one year. What´s more, the commissioned plant has the biggest electric arc furnace and widest plate mill in India. The plate producing unit caters to steel demand in the automobile sector. Uppal, who has almost four decades of engineering experience, has also ensured that the funds flow in for his forays. JSPL recently raised Rs 1,000 crore through 10,000 privately placed, unsecured non-convertible debentures. Its subsidiary, Jindal Power Ltd, raised Rs 500 crore in a similar transaction. With this, Uppal has already secured 75 per cent of the amount his company has to pay as fine due to the Supreme Court-imposed Rs 1,793 crore penalty for illegal mining. This is what we call flying in the face of adversity.