Meher Pudumjee: Standing tall

Her down-to-earth nature and her artistic inclinations are not what you’d usually associate with the Chairperson of a leading business conglomerate. But then Meher Pudumjee is hardly the “usual” chairperson. Bright and vivacious, she is the new generation entrepreneur who doesn’t believe in stereotypes either at work or in her life.

The lady who won the BS CEO of the year award for the year 2007-2008 took over as the Chairperson of Thermax limited from her legendary mother Anu Aga in 2004 and took the company to a different level.

After her graduating from Nowrosjee Wadia College, Pune, she moved to London to pursue a post graduate degree in chemical engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. She joined Thermax in 1990 as a trainee. A year later, she and her husband Pheroze Pudumjee began managing the UK subsidiary of the company. When she came back to India after five years, she joined the board of directors of Thermax. With her head firmly on her thin shoulders when the lady took over from her mother, she slowly got back the company moving on the growth chart.

According to a McKinsey report in 2007, she had successfully gone through a major turnaround exercise which helped her in augmenting her resources.

With a dream to turn Thermax into a global provider of boilers and chillers, the lady has been constantly been chasing her vision. In fact the company under her guidance has already made its presence in South East Asia, Middle East, Africa, Russia, India, the UK and the US.

A member of the Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) Family Business Forum and the Young Indians (YI), Pudumjee is also a soprano and a pianist. In fact music is big passion for the lady who practices regularly and sings with a Pune-based choir, the Chamber Singers.