Ravi Uppal resigns from L&T

Within two years of being inducted into the board of Larsen & Toubro, Ravi Uppal on Tuesday resigned from the infrastructure major.

The company on Tuesday has informed the stock exchanges that Ravi Uppal, the whole-time director and president of power business, resigned as the director. The resignation will be effective from September 15, 2012.

Once rumoured to take over the top position at L&T, Uppal is now known to join oil and gas major, Cairn India. It would be Uppal’s first tryst with an oil exploration company, as he has been majorly engaged in power equipment and automobile sectors. He had held the top job at Swiss major ABB, not just in India but also in South Asia. He started his career with Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd.

Uppal was hired by L&T, after his stint at ABB, when the infrastructure major’s super-critical power equipment business was about to take off. He had demonstrated success in booking orders for the Swiss company which were perceived to be expensive by Indian power companies. It was replication of this achievement that was expected out of his stint at L&T too. However, L&T, like all other domestic power equipment manufacturers, lost many orders to much cheaper Chinese power equipment.

If Uppal were to take over the top job at Vedanta-owned Cairn India, he would have a new set of challenges. One of them would be to increase the oil production of its Rajasthan fields, which is the task ahead of the company. Yet another would be with the tough job of dealing with the ‘babus’ of the oil ministry.