Srirangam R Ramakrishnan

Srirangam Rengaswamy Ramakrishnan was born in Tanjavur on Feb 4, 1935. He did his schooling in Srirangam before joining Anantapur College. He graduated with a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering in 1956. During this time, he was the captain of the tennis team and the director of English Drama.

He joined Hindustan Steel Ltd., now the Steel Authority of India Ltd., or SAIL in March 1957. He trained at the Coke Oven Plant in Pittsburgh, and studied Metallurgy and Business Management at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He held several leadership positions at the Bhilai Steel Plant including Chief Engineer, Coke Ovens and Byproducts, Chief Personnel Manager, and General Manager. He was the Managing Director at the Bokaro Steel Plant and later joined the SAIL headquarters as a director on the board. He was responsible for solving the problems of Indigenous coal supplies at the SAIL Corporate office in 1980, and the commissioning of the Cold Rolling Complex in Bokaro Steel Plant in 1990. During his tenure, the Steel Industry in India went through a very important phase of deregulation and subsequent changes in SAIL’s marketing policy. Earlier he was associated with the modernization programs at Rourkela and Salem Steel Plants.

Mr. Ramakrishnan’s service with SAIL was punctuated by a brief stint as the Managing Director of Nagarjuna Steels Ltd. Hyderabad, from 1985-86. He was an advisor to the Birla Group from 1993-1998, a member of the board for Sesa Goa, and a director and later the chairman of the board for Shriram EPC from 2005-2016.

He had a gregarious personality and had a vast network of family members, friends, and colleagues that he was in touch with until the very end of his life. He will be fondly remembered for the infectious enthusiasm he brought to family get-togethers and parties, and leading “Oh-Hell!” card tables, a card game that he taught all family members including his grandchildren. He was devoted to his family. He patiently helped his grandchildren with their school work, building mousetrap-powered cars for their experiments. He would spend many hours reading stories to them from the Mahabharata, an epic he also helped edit and transcribe into an unpublished book. He was an engineer in every sense of the word, even at home, rewiring basements, designing decks, and fixing broken appliances. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Hema Ramakrishnan, his sons Vijay and Jayant, his daughters-in-law Maneesha and Peggy, his grandchildren Priya and Sonia, and his siblings Rengaswamy Jagannathan, Kamala Kasturi, Kalyani Raghavan and Radha Srinivasan.

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