Contributions of A K Shukla in making HCL profitable, enforcing transparency in Governance

Arun Kumar Shukla, who took over as the Chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Copper Limited (HCL) in January 2020, has made the following major contributions during his tenure of more than three years as CMD. The debt burden of HCL has been reduced drastically from INR 1650 crore in 2020 to less than INR 200 crore as on 31.03.2023, by implementing extensive strategic changes, in the sales realization pattern of the end product, suspension of loss-making operations, curtailing wasteful expenditure and inculcating discipline and transparency in corporate work culture, etc. A loss of INR 569.35 crore was incurred principally due to reconciliation issues of the stocks in past years which got reflected in the Company Balance Sheet of FY 2019-20. Under his leadership, Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) in different work areas were formulated owing to which the Company made a profit of INR 109.98 crore (even after providing for INR 224.86 crore for bad investment in past years) in FY 20-21 and INR 373.78 crore (even after providing for balance INR 52.79 crore for bad investment in past years) in FY 21-22. Further, the profit of the company for FY 22-23 has been 295.31 crore. During his tenure, he has cleared long pending wage arrears of INR 69.5 crore pertaining to 2012 wage revision of HCL employees which was due from Aug 2014 to Feb 2016. The long pending tripartite wage settlement of workers pertaining to 2017 wage revision was amicably settled and implemented with the payment of arrears of around INR 100 crore has been ensured. He also cleared 2017 pay revision arrear of Executives. He has implemented many innovative welfare measures for the employees like providing monetary compensation to the next of kin of COVID victims, enhancing the insurance limit for the retired employees, etc. Many Central Government schemes related to CPSE have successfully been implemented in letter and spirit during his tenure. In FY 2021-22, the Company has paid to its shareholders the highest ever dividend per share. The outgo on this account was INR 112.17 Crore. For FY 2022-23 the Board also approved a dividend of 30% of PAT having approximate outgo of Rs. 88.97 Crore. The Company has successfully raised an amount of INR 500 Crore from the Equity market through Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP) to meet the Company’s Capex requirements.HCL has been the first non-banking PSU to do so. During his leadership, the Company has taken disciplinary action against a number of corrupt officers, thereby setting an example of corruption free governance in CPSE. Under his able leadership, the market capitalization of the Company increased by more than 500 % from year 2020 to end of FY 2022-23.All the expansion projects of the Company which were lagging behind have been streamlined and accelerated. Arun Kumar Shukla, born on July 7, 1963, is a Graduate Mining Engineer from IIT-ISM, Dhanbad. He has also done his M.Tech in Environmental Engineering from IIT-ISM and obtained his LLB from Ranchi University. With 38 years of experience serving in various capacities in Coal India Ltd and National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) Ltd., Shukla had joined HCL in October 2018 as Director (Operations). He had also served as Managing Director of Jharkhand State Mineral Development Corporation Ltd (JSMDC) on deputation from NMDC for about 2 years.