Gautam Thapar is Chairman & CEO of India's foremost diversified corporation, the Avantha Group.

Gautam represents the third generation of a business family, founded by his grandfather, Lala Karam Chand Thapar, in Calcutta (now Kolkata) over eighty years ago. Over the decades, the organisation has shown resilience and entrepreneurial spirit, and has continuously reinvented itself without wavering from its core values of integrity and creating lasting value for its stakeholders. The strategy followed till today includes acquisitions and exceptional financial structuring to tap opportunities and fuel growth. Though family owned, the organisation has always been professionally managed, and lists employee development and leadership training as core to its business success. Gautam, as a widely recognised institution builder, reflects this key focus area in people development, so that the world's finest training is available to the future leaders of the organisation.

Gautam began his education at the prestigious Doon School, where he imbibed a liberal education based on the ideals of secularism, discipline and equality. After studying chemical engineering in the U.S.A., he returned to India and started his career as a factory assistant in one of the organisation's manufacturing companies. He rose steadily and steered the organisation through a strategic and visionary turnaround, involving resilience and restructuring, ensuring that the Group attained dominant status in key operating sectors. Gautam became Group Chairman on 1st July 2006. He sits on the boards of various companies in India and overseas, and is one of India's youngest and brightest global business leaders. In 2008, Gautam received the coveted Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Manufacturing.

Keen on giving back to society, Gautam takes his social responsibilities very seriously. This is manifested in his involvement across three sectors: education, leadership development and sports. He is President of Thapar University, one of the top twenty technical schools in India. He is the Chairman of The Aspen Institute India, which aims to internationalise India's business, political and cultural leadership. He also takes an avid interest in promoting the game of golf, and is President of the Professional Golf Tour of India and a Board Member of the Asian Tour.