For the first time since it was formed over two decades ago, ISRO’s marketing arm Antrix Corporation Ltd does not feature three of its prominent corporate old guard on its board any more.

In the late 2013 rejig , Tata Sons’ Ratan Tata, Godrej & Boyce’s Jamshyd Godrej and Hyderabad-based MTAR Technologies’ Ravindra Reddy, who were on the Antrix board since 1992, made way for four new non-ISRO faces.

The 12-member board met on December 24, 2013. The three companies, however, remain suppliers of vital hardware and inputs for the agency’s launch vehicle programme.

ISRO Chairman and Secretary, Department of Space, K. Radhakrishnan, told The Hindu that the new directors were inducted to the reconstituted Antrix board in two phases in 2013.

The ISRO/Department of Space nominees came in first in mid-2013 and the neutral or non-ISRO members joined later after a Central Government-approved process. “We now have four new members from outside. We went through a process of selection of these members and got the approval of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. The members now have a fixed, three-year tenure,” he said.

For its new neutral directors, Antrix has picked Arun Balakrishnan, former Chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd; Y.S. Mayya, former CMD of Electronics Corporation of India Ltd under the Department of Atomic Energy; Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT Bombay; and J. Ramachandran of IIM Bangalore.

Eye on future The independent directors have got going as heads of new sub-committees on audit, business plan, remuneration and corporate social responsibility. “We have asked them to work out new business areas as we have to look at the future,” Radhakrishnan, who chairs the ISRO-Antrix Coordination Management Committee, said.

About the change of the non-ISRO guard, he said, “We have to have different perspectives coming into the system.”

The other board directors are: Antrix’s own Chairman and Managing Director since 2010, V.S. Hegde, and its Executive Director from ISRO; the director of the National Remote Sensing Centre; a deputy/associate director each from satellite and launch vehicle centres ISAC and VSSC; and from the Department of Space, its Joint Secretary, Joint Secretary-Finance and Scientific Secretary. The new Antrix structure under a separate CMD is the result of the recommendations made by a three-member committee headed by former bureaucrat V.V. Bhat over three years ago. Until then, successive ISRO Chairmen also chaired Antrix.

The board was reconstituted as part of organisational reforms initiated in 2009-10 after a controversial deal signed in 2005 between Antrix and Bangalore start-up Devas Multimedia came to light. ISRO cancelled the irregular contract for use of its two S-band satellites in February 2011. Devas has initiated an international arbitration process.

Related Topics