Ravi Uppal Age, Wife, Family, Biography & More

Some Lesser Known Facts About Ravi Uppal

• Ravi Uppal is an Indian businessman known for being detained in Dubai on 13 December 2023 for his involvement in the Mahadev online betting app.

• Uppal brings extensive business expertise, with a career spanning more than 40 years in engineering, manufacturing, and infrastructure sectors both in India and abroad. He has held key positions such as Managing Director and Group CEO of Jindal Steel and Power Limited Group, Whole-time Director on the L&T Group Board, MD and CEO (Power) at L&T, and various roles in the ABB Group, including President of Global Markets. Notably, he has served as the Founding Managing Director of Volvo in India. With a diverse background, Uppal has worked for over 15 years in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South East Asia. He has also initiated a new venture, SISCOL, focusing on steel-based civil and industrial infrastructure projects in India.

• He is actively involved in several industry forums including CII, FICCI, AIMA & academic institutions and holds a keen interest in social and community development in India.

• He has been on the board of several companies in India and Europe including BAE, UK, Actis Private Equity, UK, Riverina Bio Energy, Australia and Page Industries, Srei Finance, & Suzlon of India. He has also been on the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

• He was born into an upper-middle-class family.

• After completing his schooling, he took admission to IIT. While studying there, he wanted to go to the US and even got admission to Stanford, but one of his relatives, who was a professor at Berkeley died. His parents got worried after his death and told Uppal not to go abroad.

• He then found the next best option and took admission to IIM, Ahmedabad. He got campus placement at BHEL in 1975.

• After working at BHEL, he got a job offer from Libya, but he was already selected for IAS so he got confused about which one to choose. Eventually, he chose Libya because the money he was offered was good. The Libyan assignment was a joint venture between the government of India and Libya.

• In an interview, he revealed that once he went on a trip to Germany, the engineer who came to pick him up gave him a file to read in the 50-minute drive from the airport to the hotel. According to Uppal, he learned that the Germans’ way of working was very efficient.

• After two years, he shifted to Europe and was very stressed to see the different living standards there. After working there for some time, he then switched his job to Siemens and shifted to Germany. He later moved to Czechoslovakia.

• In 1981, he joined ASEA at Vastera, Stockhold as a technical coordinator of large projects.

• In 1982, when he was in Sweden, he was working very well but he told his boss that he wanted to shift to Iraq. His boss told him that the Iraqis would not accept an Indian boss which he found very humiliating. He was shocked that he was being rejected for his skin colour and not his skills.

• In 1983, he moved to Qatar as a resident manager. After a few years, he was put in charge of Kuwait and Qatar.

• Many years later when he joined as the head of global markets and a member of the ABB executive committee in Zurich, his boss in ASEA reported to him.

• At the age of 38, he came to India from Sweden. In India, he became the head and chairman of corporate planning of ABB. He then became the executive vice president in charge of the business segment.
  

  Ravi Uppal as the vice chairman and managing director of ABB

• He was the head of the power transmission and then given additional charge of Industrial Electronics and Systems. When he was the head of Industrial Electronics, he met the global head Indra Nooyi and asked her why the Indian team was not invited to the annual strategic planning meeting. She said that India was not in the Top 10 list. When he returned after meeting Nooyi, he told his team about her reply and told them to work hard so that they invite them to the meeting. In two years, he was invited to the meeting because they made it to the Top 10.

• While working at ABB, his boss Percy Barvenik suggested Ravi for Volvo, who was looking for someone to look after operations in India and who understood the Swedish way. Ravi was shocked but had no choice because his boss asked him to join another company. At the age of 44, he became the MD of Volvo India.

• He started a school for bus and truck drivers. The president of Volvo buses visited the drivers but Ravi was the one who translated his speech in Hindi. During the lecture, one of the drivers told him that this was the first time he had sat in a classroom and someone offered him a chair.

• While he was working at Volvo, Jorgen Centremen of ABB called him and offered him to join the company again in 2000. He told him that he could offer himself the salary he liked but he would have to double the turnover in three years.

• Uppal in an interview said that he told the president of Volvo that he wanted to join ABB in India and the president agreed to him handling the India and China branches.

• In 2009, he was invited for lunch by General Electric John Flannery. He went to meet him in the Taj Hotel, Mumbai where he was asked about the growth of ABB when Ravi was working there. He told them that they should empower the country head and everything would be better. He told them that John Flannery should become the in charge of everything. Within 15 days they made him in charge. John Flannery sent him a message thanking him.

• According to Ravi, ABB brought him in as they wanted someone who knew about the environment of other countries such as India because the other people working there were Europeans.

• In five years, ABB India grew from Rs. 8000 to Rs. 8,000 crore. They tried many other things including making the office cabin-less where anyone could approach anyone. He used to sit with the other employees in the hall.
  

  Ravi Uppal at his office

• After working there for years, he decided to come return to his home to look after his family. At that time, AM Naik, chairman of L&T approached him to join the company. He worked with Mitsubishi to set up the boiler and turbine. When he met the Japanese workers, he saw that they were fully dressed but the Indian workers were in chappals, t-shirts, and pajamas which were torn.

• In an interview, he said that his best friend is his IIT classmate Balasubramaniam who became the President of the World Bank of Asia Pacific.

• When he was a youngster, he was inspired by V Krishnamurthy, Percy Barvenik and Azim Premji.

• In Sweden, he took up hobbies of playing squash and skiing.

• Uppal was named one of the two founders of the Mahadev online betting app. He was held in Dubai by the immigration department on 13 December 2023. This action was taken based on a red corner notice (RCN) issued by Interpol, following a request from the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The ED was looking into accusations of money laundering amounting to around Rs. 5,000 crore related to the Mahadev online betting app. The ED had filed a money laundering charge sheet against Uppal and Chandrakar before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur in October 2023. According to ED officials statement, they said,
  

  He was detained last week and ED officials are in touch with authorities concerned. An initial probe has revealed that Uppal has obtained a passport of the country Vanuatu, so now extradition proceedings will start in the coming months and that procedure will take time.”