Past Presidents

Subir Raha, former CMD ONGC and former Chairman ONGC Group of Companies left for heavenly abode on 01 February, 2010.

Subir Raha, born on August 28, 1948 graduated in Electronics & Tele-communication Engineering from Jadavpur University in 1969. He was also an alumnus of the Administrative Staff College at Henley of Leeds University, UK.

He joined Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd as Chairman & Managing Director in May 2001; and separated on completion of 5 years tenure in May, 2006.

ONGC achieved multiple milestones during his tenure. ONGC’s market capitalisation zoomed to become the highest among all Indian Corporate. He was personally instrumental in ONGC acquiring MRPL and turning it around from almost BIFR status to the present Mini-Ratna status. He also led ONGC into aggressive exploration, especially in deep waters of India, and initiated IOR/ EOR projects to arrest the production decline of its mature fields.

He also led ONGC from a sectoral E&P company to become an Integrated Energy Major on global scale; acquiring many equity assets overseas. He also initiated expansion of ONGC into various value integration projects in the field of Petrochemicals, SEZ, Power, clean coal energy and alternate sources of energy.

Under his dynamic leadership, ONGC was the first Indian Corporate to sign the Integrity Pact with Transparency International (India) Ltd in April 2006. To further improve transparency in business transactions in ONGC, he introduced IT along the entire supply chain management of ONGC. Introduction of regular meeting with Vendors, Analysts, Investors even Employees were also unique initiatives of Mr. Raha. He branded ONGC from a Govt undertaking to a global oil and gas major through series of media interaction and branding activities.

Mr. R. S. Sharma was on the Board of ONGC as the CMD from May 24, 2006 to January 31, 2011. Mr. Sharma has been credited to have brought in numerous business improvements in ONGC; leveraging strengths to build up its fortunes over the last few years. In these five years, he played an important role in providing value dimensions to ONGC’s business, which grew from less than 6 billion US dollars to around 20 billion US dollars. He was also on the Board of ONGC Videsh Ltd. (OVL), India’s biggest multinational, before taking over as Director (F) on the Board of parent ONGC. Sharma played a pivotal role in financial engineering of ONGC’s other subsidiary MRPL also, which was sick when ONGC acquired it. `In 2006-07, ONGC board cleared investment proposals worth over Rs. 34,000 crores. Mr. R S Sharma is a Fellow Member of the Institute of Cost & Works Accountants of India, and an Associate Member of the Indian Institute of Bankers. His run-up to this career peak commenced 35 years ago in 1972 with the Union Bank of India. After serving there in Credit Appraisal and related spheres for a decade, the banker relocated to Baghdad, to head the Finance function of another public enterprise The Indian Road Construction Company. The next six years in the construction company (four years in the Middle East) saw him pilot many important projects single-handedly, before he joined ONGC in July 1988 as Joint Director (Finance), posted at Assam. Under his stewardship, ONGC was assigned Baa1 Credit Rating, the highest-ever Credit Rating assigned by Moody’s to any Indian Corporate. Several awards have come his way, in recognition to his individual contributions like the CNBC TV-18 CFO Award 2006 for excellence in Oil and Allied services category, India’s most recognized award for excellence in the financial field. He was also conferred with India CFO Award 2005, Excellence in Finance in PSU in December 2005, by International Market Assessment (IMA), in association with BNP Paribas, Sun Micro Systems and CNBC TV-18