When Awadesh Sinha joined as managing director and CEO of Essar Oil Limited in November 2003, he had a full agenda. The overall challenge to revive Essar Oil as a vibrant corporate entity, which inspires investor confidence.

"This would include completing the refinery at Vadinar and then operating it at full capacity, setting up around 2,000 retail outlets with an all-India footprint and getting the Ratna field going after the PSC is signed," he explains.

Sinha's association with Essar is not new. He was first appointed as CEO (marketing) in 1996. However, "After the construction of Essar's refinery was stalled in 1999, I shifted to Reliance Petroleum as president (business development)."

Sinha has over four decades of hands-on industry experience straddling all its segments to reinforce his academic credentials of a postgraduate science degree and an MBA in marketing.

Sinha entered the oil industry way back in 1960 as a management trainee at Caltex. After six years, he moved to Indian Oil Corporation (IOC). He served 30 years in India's largest refining and marketing company rising to the level of executive director, before retirement in 1996.

After superannuation from I0C, he worked with a Marine Infra. Structure Multinational, McDermott, Dubai for a period spanning a few months and also did a short stint with ONGC as principal adviser to the chairman.

Sinha remembers the acquisition of Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL) for ONGC as his most memorable assignment. Sinha explains, "Bringing it back to full capacity and fighting for its rightful place in the PSU refining sector was a terrific experience. To pull the share value from a low of Rs 2 to Rs 60 with in a span of just six months was very satisfying".

A modest man, he finds it "difficult to list your own strengths and weaknesses!" He says his biggest strength is the sheer diversity of his portfolio of previous assignments.

Sinha employs an easy, informal, transparent management style. "Trust in my team is the core belief and I give paramount importance to the application of common sense."

Sinha rarely gets any free time. But whatever he has he spends with his family or in reading. "Sundays are days when I just like to chill at home and do nothing," he says.