Mr. R Gopalakrishnan - Chairman

R. Gopalakrishnan (called Gopal) worked for his first 31 years in India's most Indian multinational, Hindustan Unilever. Since then, he has worked for India's most multinational Indian company - TATA. 
Currently, he is the executive director of Tata Sons Ltd. He is also the chairman of Tata Autocomponent Systems Ltd., Rallis India Limited and Advinus Therapeutics Private Ltd., vice chairman of Tata Chemicals, and a director of Tata Power and Tata Technologies. 
He also serves as an independent director on the boards of the Indian subsidiaries of Akzo Nobel and BP Castrol. 
Gopal studied physics at Calcutta University and engineering at IIT. From 1967, he served Hindustan Unilever Ltd. for over three decades in various capacities. The appointments held by Gopal from 1990 onwards were: Chairman of Unilever Arabia (based in Jeddah), followed by Managing Director of Brooke Bond Lipton India (based in Bangalore), followed by Vice Chairman of Hindustan Lever Limited. 
He joined Tata Sons in September 1998 as Executive Director. 
Gopal is involved with education through his board memberships of a school and two management institutes. He is a Past President of All India Management Association. He has delivered guest lectures in India and abroad. His articles have been published in management journals and financial newspapers. 

 

Dr. K K Narayanan - Managing Director

Dr. Narayanan is one of the Founder Directors of the Company and is in overall charge of the Company and its subsidiary seed business. Earlier Narayanan was the Program Lead for Crop Transformation and Functional Genomics at the Monsanto Research Center, Bangalore. Dr. Narayanan, a plant molecular biologist and breeder, graduated with a Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Genetics from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University at Coimbatore, India. He later on carried out post-doctoral research at the Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University under a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. 

 

Dr. Gautham Nadig - Executive Director

Dr. Nadig is one among the founder members of Metahelix. Dr. Nadig leads the Research and Development, Business Development and administrative function of the Company. Before joining Metahelix, Dr. Nadig was a Senior Scientist in the Bioinformatics division of the Monsanto Research Center, Bangalore and later on served as a consultant to Monsanto's Plant Genomics group at Saint Louis. Dr. Nadig is a computational biophysicist who graduated with a Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His postdoctoral work at the Department of Chemistry, Pennsylvania State University, USA was in the area of computational quantum chemistry.

 

Mr. Ravi Krishna S - Executive Director

Prior to joining Metahelix, Ravi was with Business Development group in E.I. DuPont India Private Limited, Gurgaon and earlier led the seed business at PHI Seeds Limited, Hyderabad. He had also worked with Advanta India (previously ITC Zeneca Ltd) in different positions before leading the Marketing and Business Development function. In his previous roles, Ravi has been responsible for new business initiatives and brings in considerable experience in marketing and business development. Ravi is a post-graduate in Dairy Technology and a business graduate from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

 

Mr. R Mukundan - Director

Mr. Mukundan joined Tata Administrative Service in 1990, after completion of MBA from FMS, Delhi University and BE-Electrical Engineering from IIT, Roorkee. Prior to his current assignment as Managing Director, he headed the Global Chemicals business of Tata Chemicals and has held responsibilities as Chief Operating Officer - Chemicals Business (India) and Head of Mithapur Chemical Complex. 
During his 18 year career with Tata Group, he has held various responsibilities including Strategy & Business Development, Corporate Quality, Corporate Planning, Projects etc across the Chemical, Automotive and Hospitality sectors of the Tata Group. He has been on the Executive Committees of various industry forums including Indian Chemical Council, Automotive Component Manufacturers Association, Alkali Manufacturers Association of India and CII Chemical Industry Forum. He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School�s Advanced Management Programme. 

 

Mr. V Shankar - Director

Mr V Shankar is the Managing Director and Chief Executive of Rallis India Limited, a TATA Enterprise. He joined the Board of Rallis in March 2007 as an Executive Director and was appointed Managing Director in January 2009. Mr Shankar moved to Rallis in December 2005 as the Chief Operating Officer and became the CEO effective 1st June 2007. Prior to this, he held the position of COO, Phosphates Business in Tata Chemicals Limited (TCL). 
Mr Shankar began his career with Indian Aluminium Company, Limited in 1979. During his career span there for six years he served in the Finance functions at Factory, Profit Centre and Treasury. He then joined Hindustan Lever Limited in 1986 and had a long stint of eighteen years with the Unilever Group of Companies. During this period he served in various positions including Unilever Corporate Audit and as Business Head for Agri Business and later Fertilisers. In Fertilisers, Mr Shankar was appointed Director in Hind Lever Chemicals Limited which went on to merge with TCL in the year 2004. Following the merger, Mr Shankar moved into the TATA Group to head the Phosphates Business. 
During his tenure in the Fertiliser business, Mr Shankar was the Chairman of the Eastern Region for the Fertiliser Association of India. Presently, he is on the Association Boards of Crop Life India as well as Crop Care Federation of India. He is also a Governing Board Member of the EU Chambers. He is Vice Chairman of the CII, Agriculture National Council. 
Mr Shankar is a Chartered Accountant, Cost Accountant, Company Secretary as well as a Law Graduate. Ranked third in the Calcutta University and having qualified with distinctions of All-India rank in both Intermediate and Final CA examinations, Mr Shankar has varied experience in industry for about 30 years.

 

Mr. K R Venkatadri - Director