Meet Capt. P Raghu Raman, Founding CEO of NATGRID

When he was in the Indian Army, Capt. P Raghu Raman wrote what he calls a “paper”, which one of his senior-most officers happened to read. Captain Raman, now the Group President of Reliance Industries Limited, concluded in his paper that the Indian Armed Forces adopted a farcical mix of the Nato and Warsaw doctrines; while the former alignment, equipped with state-of-the-art weapons, would not “cede an inch”, the low-cost-arms-using Warsaw line-up let enemy forces advance until the time was ripe for them to strike back. Raman wrote that India followed the Nato policy with cheap “Warsaw equipment”.

After reading this paper, the senior officer told his ward jokingly, “Anyone who writes like this is destined to either be a general or be court-martialed.”
For someone who can weave out detail after detail about “lessons” from the Second World War, other battles and even hostage crisis, such as the one in Russia’s Beslan, much like a war historian, the army was perhaps not the right place to hang out for long. Capt. P Raghu Raman, who joined the Indian Military Academy in 1986 after graduating in commerce from Sri Venkateshwara College, Delhi, was destined to be elsewhere– he quit as captain in 1998 to pursue other interests.

He has possibly one of the most unprecedented career profiles of over 25 years. After spending eleven years as an officer in the Indian Armed Forces, followed by another eleven years in the corporate sector before joining the Government as CEO of the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID). The National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) is the integrated intelligence grid connecting databases of core security agencies of the Government of India to collect comprehensive patterns of intelligence that can be promptly accessed by intelligence agencies. It was first proposed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008.

He started his career with the Indian Army. During his service to the army, he was in active combat in Punjab battling terrorists and in Siachen Glacier facing Pakistani troops. He has served as a UN Peacekeeper, as well as been an instructor teaching leadership and strategy to officers at the prestigious School of Armoured Warfare.

After leaving the Indian Army, Captain Raman joined the Mahindra Group in 1998 and helped set up Mahindra United World College. Over the next ten years, he led several companies, including First Choice, Mahindra SSG and finally DLSI, a Mahindra joint venture with British Aerospace before being handpicked to form and head the National Intelligence Grid, Ministry of Home Affairs in the Government of India. After his five year stint as the founding CEO and Secretary of NATGRID, he joined Reliance Industries Limited as Group President, Risk, Security & New Ventures.

Capt. Raman is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a frequent guest faculty in business schools, keynote speaker and columnist on National Security Strategy and Leadership in leading publications. He is often seen doing powerful talks at the coveted Tedx Talks. He has also authored a book “Everyman’s War”.

Here are a few videos of Capt. P Raghu Raman, delivering excellence to the youth of India.