The Fresh Prince of Shell India

The Disruptor No One Younger Has Been Picked to Lead a Top Energy Company in India Than Nitin Prasad. His Goal: to Steer the Anglo-Dutch Giant Beyond Oil and Gas Into New Frontiers Like Technology and Biofuels.
 

- Debabrata Das

FIRST-TIME VISITORS TO Royal Dutch Shell’s Indian headquarters in Gurugram are required to sit through an eight-minute health and safety video. Then they have to fill in a form to declare that they watched it attentively. This process, however tedious, reflects Shell’s core values: safety and assurance.

It, therefore, came as a surprise, when Shell picked 39-year old Nitin Prasad to replace Yasmine Hilton, who retired last year. After all, this is an industry in which corporate honchos regularly need to interact with government officials significantly older than Prasad. Given that no one in their thirties has headed a major oil and gas firm in India before, an older executive may have been the safer bet. When it comes to picking its leaders though, Shell has shown it can make bold decisions. Ben Van Beurden, appointed as Shell’s global CEO in 2013, was an outside choice, behind better-known candidates such as CFO Simon Henry in the pecking order.

Prasad, dressed in a black suit and red tie, greets me in a spacious conference room adjoining his ninth floor corner office. As a reporter, I’ve met most of the dramatis personae at the top oil and gas companies. Prasad immediately strikes me as a lot more approachable than others at similar positions; it would be easy to mistake him for a young tech entrepreneur.

The personalities of Shell India chiefs over the years have mirrored Shell’s needs at the time. In the 1990s, when a good amount of lobbying was required, they had Vikram Mehta, a former bureaucrat who knew his way around government corridors. He was followed by Hilton, an expert in information technology, who set up Shell’s IT hub in Bengaluru. Prasad comes in at a time when energy solutions need a rethink.