Vikram Mehta F79
Citizenship: India
Current position: Chairman of the Shell Group in India, where, he says, “my work takes me all over India and overseas, frenetically.”
Other notable positions: Senior Economist, Philips Petroleum, London and Bartlesville, Oklahoma, USA; Strategic Planning Advisor, Oil India Limited; Managing Director, Shell Markets and Chemicals, Egypt.
The complexity of international business is a reality that Vikram Mehta lives every day. “Very few issues now can be put into a silo,” he says. “Most issues of global importance straddle the public and the private sectors, whether climate change, energy security, or food security. They require entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity, but also an ability to consider the larger public consequences of an individual action.”
Mehta takes an example from his current work: India’s current energy situation. “The bulk of energy that Indians consume is actually non-commercial energy,” Mehta explains. “It is not oil or gas. More than 50% is bio-mass, and it comes from wood, dung, or straw. This is because large proportions of India’s population are not connected to the mainstream money economy.”
India’s situation illustrates the reality of working in the energy sector today: “Anyone connected to energy must have a very clear perception of the economic, political, and environmental contexts in which they begin to tackle energy issues. Fletcher gave me the ability to analyze those issues not just through the softer methods of government relations, but also through the harder tools of economics and commerce.”