Vikram Mehta

Background

Mehta comes from a Hindu family with a tradition of government service. His distant forebears had, it is said, served as ministers in the court of the Maharana of Mewar. His grandfather and father both served India as diplomats; his grandfather was India's High Commissioner to Pakistan for a period, while his father, an officer in the Indian Foreign Service, retired as India's Foreign Secretary. Mehta's sister, Vijay Kumari Khan, married an aristocratic Muslim with strong connections to Pakistan. She is the wife of Sulaiman Khan, the present Raja of Mahmudabad. Sulaiman's father, Mohammad Amir Ahmad Khan, was not only an ardent proponent of the idea of partitioning India to create Pakistan, but was also the most generous and committed financier of Jinnah's and the Muslim League's activities in the run-up to partition.

Education

Mehta completed his schooling from the Mayo College in Ajmer. He has degrees from Oxford University in England. He has a MALD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. At Oxford, Mehta was the university mate of Benazir Bhutto (two time prime minister of Pakistan), and of Imran Khan, the Pakistani cricketier-turned-politician. All of them had PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) as their common subject.

Career

In 1978, Mehta passed the civil services examination and was selected for the Indian Administrative Service. He underwent two years of training at Mussourie, which made him decide that he was not suitable for the role of administrator. He resigned the IAS in 1980 to join Phillips Petroleum in London as their senior economist. He was there for only four years, returning in 1984 to India to join government service again, this time in a Public Sector Undertaking: the government=owned oil company, Oil India Ltd. He was appointed an advisor for strategic planning. He again did not stay long, leaving once again for London in 1988 to join Royal Dutch Shell (or Shell International), another petroleum major. Three years later, in 1991, he was appointed managing director of Shell Markets and Shell Chemical Companies in Egypt. In 1994, he was appointed chairman of the Shell Group of Companies in India. He retired from this position on 1 October 2012 and was succeeded by Yasmine Hilton. Thus, his entire career has been in the petroleum industry, and he worked for 24 years (1988-2012) with Shell

Post-retirement

After retiring from Shell, Vikram Mehta became the chairman of Brookings India. In this capacity, he began writing a number of columns and op-eds for various Indian publications, prominently the Indian Express and the Financial Express. He also accepted a number of independent, non-executive directorships at large corporates, including Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra and Mahindra, Colgate Palmolive (India) and Vodafone India. He also serves as a trustee of director of certain non-corporate organizations, such as the CII and the Fletcher School at Tufts University, USA.

Affiliations

Directorships (Corporate)

Directorships (Non-corporate)