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Since Vartika Shukla became Chair and Managing Director of Engineers India Limited (EIL) in 2021, the New Delhi-based engineering consultancy has delivered a record-breaking performance, which is reflected in the company’s highest ever order book position of more than US$1.3 billion.
EIL began its journey in 1965 as a joint venture between the Government of India and United States-based Bechtel International Corporation, with its origins in the oil and gas sector.
“We need to be continually competitive and continually on the move because technology is changing very fast.”
EIL became a wholly government-owned enterprise in 1967 and in 2024–25, celebrated its 60 years of dedicated service to deliver mega projects in India and overseas.
The company has since transformed itself into a diversified global engineering firm, expanding into infrastructure, chemicals, mining and metallurgy – shifts Shukla herself has played a key part in since joining as a management trainee in 1988.
EIL’s future, however, lies in delivering projects in the emerging sectors and new-age technologies including bioethanol, sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), energy-efficient infrastructure and more. The company is already implementing one of the highest-capacity biorefinery projects and offering its services for India’s first SAF plant.
“We have executed a number of collaborative agreements with reputed institutions in the cutting-edge engineering and technology domain,” Shukla tells The CEO Magazine. “For instance, we have collaborated with an Australian company in the area of concentrated solar thermal technology.”
On the international front, EIL has strengthened its engineering office in Abu Dhabi and forged successful engagements with ADNOC and its group companies in the United Arab Emirates. It also has engagements with BAPCO in Bahrain, KNPC in Kuwait, PDO in Oman, projects in the liquefied natural gas and petrochemical sectors in Africa, a power plant project in Guyana and a refinery in Mongolia, laying a strong foundation in new geographies.
“We need to get out there on a larger horizon, as there is opportunity and there is need as well. There are very few players who have the ability to do everything under one umbrella,” she explains.
“Within that umbrella of decarbonization is a huge opportunity that we have in the nuclear sector. There aren’t many players there and we as an organization have already been associated with the nuclear fuel complex. We worked on the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, one of the largest nuclear power station in India, and we have also worked with the Heavy Water Board.
“So we are renewing our relationships and renewing our strengths so that when certain spaces open up to the private sector, we will already be there. And in general, we are open to more private sector opportunities.”
Winning such landmark projects, which have built the foundation for Shukla’s ambitious growth goals, have come not just from hard work.
She believes in business philosophies like lean management; quality circles and management system Six Sigma; industry-leading contractual practices; fast-track procurement; digital procurement; agile decision-making; digital transformation; and innovation-driven growth toward operational excellence.
“You must look for complementary skills, build collaborations globally and leapfrog toward newer areas.”
Board-level members also make a point to regularly interact with people in the positions directly below and two levels below them, to gain further insights and conduct brainstorms.
Meanwhile, introducing machine learning and AI – and moving toward paperless – is also bringing costs down to grow EIL’s competitive edge.
“What we’ve done in the past four years is tremendous in terms of building the ability for our engineering teams to work with digital tools,” Shukla reveals.
“We have a lot of machine learning and AI interventions that have gone into our systems and processes, enabling us to build up faster as a project management company.
“Unless we are competitive, the strike rate of order inflow will not be there. So we need to be continually competitive and continually on the move because technology is changing very fast.
“We may have adopted one technology for our internal processes and our engineering skills, and maybe tomorrow there’s something new on the block. It is very important we keep pace with that.”
For this reason, Shukla has dubbed 2025 the ‘Year of Transformation’ for EIL, building on 2024’s ‘Year of Collaboration’, defined by growing its supplier network to around 2,500 partners within India and globally, including the likes of Burckhardt Compression, Kirloskar Ebara Pumps Limited, Larsen & Toubro and Schneider Electric.
“We did a lot of blending together because I don’t believe that reinventing the wheel in this age makes any sense. You must look for complementary skills, build collaborations globally and leapfrog toward newer areas, toward more businesses,” she advises.
“Often things go wrong in a project, and that’s where this relationship plays a very crucial role to ensuring a project is completed on time. We have many stakeholder interactions, virtually and physically, to make sure we take care of them.
“We even encourage them to bring out prototypes. We can help them scale up and introduce them to the market.”
Taking local to global by empowering partners to assist the company’s growth – particularly internationally, in markets like the Middle East, Africa and Mongolia – aligns with a national vision promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to increase India’s competitiveness on the global stage. And it all adds up to a culture that is exciting to younger generations and leads to greater talent retention.
“Empowering our teams has been an extremely important objective,” Shukla confirms. “Since we are a public sector organization, we have a delegation of powers, so a lot of responsibility has been assigned already so that they are able to make decisions on their own. That is an extremely important thing to fast-track the projects that we really believe in.”
“Every new client and project is a new territory, presenting new opportunities and new challenges.”
Looking forward, Shukla is excited to continue to empower the next generation, which is set to continue EIL’s legacy of success.
“The challenge that consultancies like those in our space have is attrition, because talent is short the world over,” she notes. “We hold onto people in our organization because every project presents a change. There’s nothing mundane about it.
“Every new client and project is a new territory, presenting new opportunities and new challenges. This keeps everybody excited, and helps us keep the younger workforce, who want to prove and showcase their talent.”
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