Desh Deepak Misra has taken over as the Director (Human Resource) of India’s most valuable public sector enterprise, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation limited (ONGC). Misra, 56, took over the reins of 33,000 plus workforce on August 1.
Prior to his elevation to the ONGC Board, he was the Head of Corporate Administration at ONGC Headquarters, Dehradun.
A Masters in Public Administration from the University of lucknow, he joined ONGC in January 1985. Starting his career from the Baroda office of ONGC, his result-oriented and self-motivated approach at work was noticed soon, which led to his relocation to Dehradun as Executive Assistant to the then Member (Personnel) of ONGC Board. His rich exposure in this assignment was reinforced with field experience gained in leading HR teams in various regions of ONGC at Assam, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand.
He is the recipient of ONGC’s ‘Young Executive of the Year’ award and has been instrumental in ONGC securing the ‘Earth Care Award - 2008’ for mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Known for his out-of-box creative approach and amiable nature, he has an abiding passion for wildlife photography. His lens has captured a number of endangered animal species, from close quarters; the Komodo Dragons of Indonesia is one recent example. His profiling of the bio-diversity of Karjat hills of Maharashtra has been published as a coffee table book ‘Karjat Diaries’.
He piloted a number of Community Development programmes during his tenure at Uran Plant in Raigarh district of Maharashtra and at Uttarakhand as General Manager – Head Corporate Administration, to align the aspirations of local communities with ONGC’s business. He has the rare distinction of being a part of the ‘Support Team’ of the first Indian civilian expedition to Kanchenjunga Peak in 1988. He was the Deputy leader of the ‘Trans-Desert Safari 1995’ - a 14-day joint venture between ONGC and BSF, which crossed Thar Desert on camels along the Indo-Pak border.
Communicating his first message to ONGCians, after taking over as the Director (HR) of the Company, he has shared his doctrine of ‘PHD’ with ‘P’ stands for ‘Passion’, ‘H’ for ‘Hardwork’ and ‘D’ for discipline, to re-energize the people to achieve the vision driven goals of ONGC.As Director (HR) of ONGC one of his principal agendas would be to steer ahead the 33,000 plus professional geoscientists, engineers and managers manning the operations at various levels of the energy company, under a formidable national mandate given to ONGC.