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.
In 2007, he authored his first book, The Case of the
Bonsai Manager, published by Penguin India. In 2010, his
second book entitled when the penny drops:
learning what is not taught has been published by Penguin
India.
