Achieving the next level of growth: Special Feature
New Delhi   14-Sep-2010

Indian Oil Corporation believes in delivering and serving the nation, says Preeti Verma Lai

If India's flagship national oil company could speak, it would perhaps introduce itself as "My name is Indian Oil Corporation Limited, I am over 50, my business interests straddle the entire hydrocarbon value chain and I am aspiring to be the Energy of India..." It would have been awesome to hear India's largest oil-refining and marketing company speak up. But it does not speak. Actually, it does not need to. Look around and you would find a bit of this oil behemoth in everything. Almost everything.

Every morning you can rustle up breakfast in a jiffy, thanks to Indane LPG cylinder. Believe me, you are not the only one blessing that blue flame every morning; the Indane network covers almost 57 million households in India! If you have been religiously choosing Servo lubricant, XtraPremium petrol or XtraMile diesel, your car engine would never sputter and die in the middle of a traffic snarl. You can buckle up, slump in an aircraft and criss-cross the country without a worry on your brow because between one sunrise and the next, IndianOil Aviation Service refuels 1,500 flights. If you are the fiery ‘I Love the Environment' brand, rest in peace, because IndianOil has set aside Rs 2,000 crore to tap alternative energy and is one of the few companies to have registered for roof-top based solar power projects and grid-connected ventures. That's not all of IndianOil in your life. Bitumen, the common binder used in road construction, the paraffin wax that is essential for the fragrant candles that you light in the evening, petcoke that goes into cement.... IndianOil has all of them in its repertoire, a repertoire that explains why IndianOil along with its subsidiary (CPCL), accounts for over 48% petroleum products market share, 34% national refining capacity and 71% downstream sector pipelines capacity in India. And yes, if you are adventurous enough and want to walk along the IndianOil crude oil and product pipelines, you better tie your shoelaces tight, lug barrels of energy drinks and get prepared to walk 10,899 kms. That's how long the IndianOil pipeline network is!

Leaf through magazines and they would all sing paeans to IndianOil's recent ranking in the Fortune 500 list-at rank 125, it holds the highest rank amongst Indian companies. Recently, the company with 34,000 workforce was conferred with the Asia's Best Employer Brand Award 2010 in Suntec, Singapore. That says enough about any company, specially a company that closed the year 2009-2010 with a sales turnover of Rs 2,71,074 crore and profits of Rs 10,221 crore. Fund managers and financial pundits might parley endlessly about the company's financial strength, but if you go to Leh today, those affected by the cloudburst and flashfloods would go beyond crunching numbers-they look at IndianOil as the Good Samaritan.

The terrain of Leh is tortuous and IndianOil is the only oil company to have established its infrastructure in the risky landscape. And when the cloudburst spelt doom for Leh and the fringe villages, the IndianOil team braved the inclement weather and formidable odds to ensure smooth supply of petroleum products, specially LPG cooking gas cylinders. Cash-strapped customers in Leh are getting cooking gas on credit. The operations at the IndianOil bottling plant nearly 10 km from Leh (on Leh-Kargil route) are being maintained against all adversities. Not just this, IndianOil staff are pitching in as foot soldiers, lending a helping hand to Border Roads Organisation (BRO), Border Security Force (BSF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), DGBR units, the Indian Army and the Air Force to bring back normalcy to the flood-ravaged land. Reaching petroleum products to the world's highest altitude bulk storage depot, Aviation Fuelling Station, LPG bottling plant and petrol pumps set up by IndianOil in the highly inaccessible, mountainous regions of Jammu & Kashmir involves tough logistics, but the nation's largest oil-marketing company is not hanging its boots in despair, it is being the good Samaritan in the devastated Leh.

Accomplishments and recognitions

B M Bansal
Chairman, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.
With munificence at its heart and excellence at its core, what is the next milestone for the company that operates 10 of India's 20 refineries with a refining capacity of 1.25 million barrels a day? Says Mr B M Bansal, Chairman and Director (Planning & Business Development and HR): "To achieve the next level of growth, IndianOil is currently pursuing a string of strategic initiatives across the hydrocarbon value chain for upstream integration into oil exploration and production, downstream integration into petrochemicals, and diversification into natural gas business, besides globalisation of marketing operations." This is in addition to consolidation in the core areas of refining and marketing. With expertise in oil and gas sector, Mr Bansal is guiding IndianOil's transformation into the 'Energy of India' in a sustainable manner.

Natural Gas marketing is another thrust area for IndianOil with special focus on City Gas Distribution (CGD) business. To expand its basket of offerings and ensure sustainable growth, IndianOil has forayed into alternative energy options such as wind, solar, bio-fuels and nuclear power. A 21 MW wind power project is operational in the Kutch district of Gujarat. The solar power initiative is being spearheaded on a pilot basis in Orissa, Karnataka and the Northeast and an all-India phased roll out is underway. IndianOil has the largest captive plantation—over 1,000 hectares—for bio-fuel production in India which is underway in Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, generating rural employment of over 1.4 lakh man-days. In Uttar Pradesh, IndianOil is establishing a model value chain for the production of bio-diesel.

And you thought, IndianOil only sold oil. Well, it does. But remember to look around...There is a bit of IndianOil in everything you do in life. Almost everything.