WHEN RESILIENCE, HUMILITY AND THE HUMANE SPIRIT PROPEL THE HARD DRIVE OF AN INDIAN MAJOR IN THE ENGINEERING BUSINESS

For years Ms Anu Aga has been the face of the major developments in India's energy and environment engineering segment. The valuable contributions she has brought to the sector with her helming of Thermax Ltd., the Rs. 32.46 billion energy and environment engineering business, as its chairperson for eight years, continues to resonate to this day.

- ANU AGA ERSTWHILE CHAIRMAN THERMAX GLOBAL LTD.

Ms Aga inherited the leadership of Thermax Ltd. on the unexpected demise of her husband Rohinton Aga, its CMD, in 1996. From that day forward till her retirement in 2004 she poured all her energies in strengthening the company's growth trajectory with strategic, insightful decision-making.

For Aga this sudden move to serve as the company's chairman posed a huge challenge. As a mother of two young kids and with no background in either business or engineering, helming the large-scale, highly-diversified engineering firm entailed facing numerous unknown difficulties.

Embracing this twist of fate, she decided to recalibrate her thinking and set to work to do a good job of it. When Aga took over the reins of Thermax India, which was on a downturn, was facing its own struggles. What became clear to Aga was that mired in its own past mindset Thermax was in dire need to change with the times to stay ahead of the game.