Engineers India Ltd (EIL) is transitioning from a traditional EPC contractor to a knowledge-led technology leader. CMD Vartika Shukla discusses EIL’s strategic shift toward green hydrogen, decarbonization, and global expansion.
Engineers India Ltd (EIL) was built to execute projects; today it is learning to shape markets. As the global energy system shifts towards decarbonisation, digitalisation, and new fuels, the company is repositioning itself from a traditional Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contractor to a knowledge-led engineering and technology company seeking earlier engagement in projects and greater influence over investment decisions. The transition is visible in its expanding international order book, deeper play in green hydrogen, and more. In an interview with ENERGDIVE, Vartika Shukla, Chairman and Managing Director, EIL, explains how the company is balancing legacy strengths with emerging opportunities.
The shift in EIL’s business mix towards high-value consultancy and engineering services is strategically aligned with the evolving global energy landscape and EIL’s long-term growth vision.
EIL has consciously positioned knowledge, domain expertise, and intellectual capital as its primary growth drivers. This is evident in the increasing emphasis on entering the project during its conceptualisation, enabling the company to allow EIL to engage with clients at the front end of decision-making, shaping project scope, technology pathways, and sustainability outcomes well before capital commitments are frozen.
The company’s core engineering capabilities have enabled the organisation to diversify its business in various areas, including 2G Ethanol, Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), energy-efficient infrastructure, state-of-the-art data centres, strategic storage of crude and petroleum products in rock caverns and green hydrogen apart from its robust oil and gas portfolio. The company is leveraging its hardcore engineering and technical capabilities positions it well for taking assignments in these new and emerging areas in the energy sector.
The organisational intent has always been to optimise risk exposure and the consultancy segment leverages EIL’s engineering depth and project management strengths offers competitive advantage towards growth and mitigation of risks.
The asset-light business growth strategy with an optimum blend of consultancy and turnkey segments offers higher margins and scalability. Investments in in-house R&D, proprietary technologies, digital platforms, and AI-enabled engineering tools further reinforce this knowledge-led approach by creating reusable intellectual assets that can be deployed across multiple projects and geographies.
Overall, EIL has evolved its role to become a trusted and preferred engineering and technology partner, enabling sustainable, resilient, and future-ready energy infrastructure while ensuring long-term value creation for both our clients and EIL.
EIL has played a crucial role in shaping the development of the Oil & Gas sector in India and has contributed significantly to implementing mega projects across the hydrocarbon value chain in its journey of six decades. It has a strong footprint in 20 out of 23 refineries in India and has also implemented 10 out of 11 mega petrochemical projects in the country. In the changing global energy landscape, the company has aligned its business strategy to the emerging needs of the industry.
The company anchors all its businesses, ranging from crude oil refining, petrochemicals, pipelines, infrastructure, or emerging energy domains to a common purpose to deliver safe, efficient, and sustainable energy solutions for its esteemed clientele. This shared engineering philosophy ensures that diversification does not dilute focus, but rather builds on transferable capabilities such as process engineering, project management, digitalisation, and asset lifecycle expertise.
Our strategic clarity is reinforced through our strategic approach that has synergy between its core and emerging sectors. Core sectors like refining and pipelines provide scale, execution experience, and steady cash flows. Adjacent areas such as petrochemicals and infrastructure leverage existing competencies, while emerging domains such as green hydrogen, sustainable fuels, Carbon, Capture, Utilisation, and Storage (CCUS), and energy efficiency are pursued selectively, guided by techno-economic viability, government policy changes, and clients’ investment projections.
Overall, EIL relies on early-stage engagement and systems-level thinking to assess how technologies, markets, and regulations interact across sectors. Common evaluation frameworks covering cost optimisation, carbon intensity reduction, scalability, and risk mitigation remain crucial in our decision making while executing projects both in India and overseas.
We have significantly advanced our global footprint in recent years. The successful commissioning and smooth operation of the Dangote Oil Refinery Project in Nigeria, the largest single train refinery in the world and the 6,00,000 TPA Polypropylene plant at Lekki Free Trade Zone, reflect the company’s pivotal role in the execution of mega projects overseas, advancing ‘Local to Global’ vision of the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India.
Based on its engagements with Dangote group and the trust the company built over time during the execution of the Dangote Oil Refinery Company (DORC) project, Dangote group has once again joined hands with EIL to create one of the world’s largest hubs for nitrogenous fertilisers, comprising six ammonia-urea production trains. Upon completion of this expansion, Dangote Fertiliser will rank among the world’s largest fertiliser complexes, with a production capacity of 8 million tons of urea annually and six fully integrated ammonia-urea production trains. This milestone not only strengthens Africa’s industrial ecosystem but also highlights EIL’s unmatched engineering expertise, execution excellence, and leadership in delivering mega projects across the global hydrocarbon and fertiliser value chain.
The company is also progressing well on the greenfield refinery project in Mongolia, supported by a Government of India line of credit, the Guyana Integrated NGL Plant and the 300 MW CCGT Power Plant for Guyana Power and Gas Inc, a wholly owned company of the Government of Guyana.
EIL marked 30 years of its operation in Abu Dhabi, the UAE. EIL-Abu Dhabi office started its journey in the year 1996 and has evolved from a modest start to establishing a strategic foothold as an engineering hub offering engineering, project management and procurement services to a diverse set of clients primarily in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Over the past three decades, EIL Abu Dhabi has played a vital role in shaping the UAE’s Energy landscape, successfully executing landmark assignments for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and its group companies, including CONCEPT, SELECT, FEED and PMC projects such as Qusahwirah Field Development, GASCO Pipelines and Mishrif Oil fields Development, among others. These achievements exemplify the trust our clients have placed in EIL’s technical expertise and project execution capabilities. In the previous year, we have been awarded several projects overseas that includes projects from joint operation Saudi Arabian Chevron Inc, Kuwait Gulf Oil Company, ADNOC group companies, ODUM Energy, Sonatrach in Algeria, Borogue, to name a few.
The company’s internationalisation efforts can be traced in terms of its order book positions and the partnerships the company forged in recent years. It is important to note that the company achieved its highest-ever order inflow from overseas, more than Rs 1,000 crores in 2024-25. In the FY 2025-26 so far, EIL’s order inflow from international businesses constitutes around 40 percent whereas more than 60 percent of our businesses are from sectors other than hydrocarbon. This reflects EIL’s readiness to tap into the opportunities presented to it by the changing market dynamics amidst the emerging energy landscape across the globe.
Energy Asset Integrity Management has become increasingly vital as industries worldwide strive to achieve their decarbonisation goals. The old assets offer opportunities to improve energy efficiency through better heat integration, improving heater efficiency, adding air preheater systems, low-level heat recovery, optimisation of fractionators and distillation columns, and steam and power system optimisation.
EIL has also developed several IIoT-based digital interventions to optimise the existing asset performance in the refineries. For instance, the company’s digital solutions to enhance the energy efficiency of fired heaters in the refineries have immense potential for refineries to reduce the operational energy requirement. It has already been demonstrated in one of the refineries in India. EIL has also developed a web-based platform for realistic assessment of industrial carbon dioxide footprints (EngCO2 Chitran) delineating the operational boundaries of the units. It offers various digital products and services through a dedicated Digital Technology Solutions (DTS) department catering to the emerging needs of the energy sector clientele.
The company has proactively taken initiatives in digitalisation and automation, leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to enhance operational excellence and cater to the emerging needs of the business. These tools assist EIL engineers in decision-making during the project life cycle to achieve higher efficiency with enhanced quality of deliverables.
Some of them include development of EngAIDesign – Cable Schedule, an AI-enabled engineering solution, which optimises instrumentation cables and junction boxes using advanced ML algorithms. Development of AI-based structural integrity monitoring and predictive maintenance system. EIL’s in-house AI/ML-based application EngAICosting™ is upgraded with retraining of the model and validation with the latest project data.
Besides, upgraded EngProjectView™, EIL’s digital project management platform, by integration with warehouse management system, vendor document management system and Monthly Progress Reporting System (eMPR). EIL has implemented multiple digitalisation solutions during project execution in two large domestic projects, for example, control tower, project management information system, 4D monitoring, digital quality inspection, digital safety management, automated manpower and machine productivity system, drone-based construction monitoring, etc.
The company has also launched several GenAI based solutions recently, such as chatbots for various applications, including HR policies and procedures, to enhance operational efficiency.
In a competitive marketplace, adding a market-ready skill set is quintessential to deliver value-added services to our clients. EIL has taken several initiatives towards skill development of our workforce in the past year to serve these emerging needs, apart from directly hiring fresh talent through lateral recruitment.
In view of the changing business environment, EIL has conducted lateral recruitment drives to hire officers at various levels in different departments. The company issued offers to 125 experienced professionals last year and hired over 10 professionals in its specialised services divisions, in addition to the recruitment of over 100 management trainees in various disciplines.
EIL has significantly enhanced its training budget, which is almost five times as compared to 2020-21 and our training man-days per employee have increased to 3.57, double the 2020–21 level, and the company aims to achieve five man-days per employee during FY 2025–26, bringing it close to international training benchmarks in the industry.
In the previous year, the company successfully conducted ‘Shikhar’, an advanced leadership program and Aarohan, curated for senior officers of EIL with a focus on enhancing leadership skills as well as augmenting professional and personal excellence.
'Pragaman - Building Managerial Excellence (BME)’ was successfully conducted during the year, in which three batches with 63 young managers with 5-10 years of work experience across key functions were also groomed. EIL strengthened millennial engagement through the Youphoria platform by organising Urjaalekh, a two-day national intra-industry technical paper competition during 20-21 June 2025 at Gurugram complex. This program brought together youth from 11 leading Maharatna and Navratna oil and gas CPSEs to share best practices and innovations across seven thematic categories, including energy transition, which was introduced in 2025. Their papers were evaluated by eminent industry leaders and academic experts.
Aligned with the Government of India’s mission Karmyogi, around 60 batches of one day Rashtriya Karmayogi training programmes have been conducted by 33 master trainers covering over 2,000 employees across the organisation.
The company also had some interesting expert lectures as part of its flagship Suvigya Lecture series to keep ourselves abreast of the recent developments in the global business.
Further, EIL conducted awareness programmes on ISO 9001 (including ERMS), ISO 14001, and ISO 45001 to strengthen awareness on quality, environmental, and occupational health & safety standards and to improve overall safety performance. During the year, more than 100 participants attended these sessions.
Expanding its international capacity-building portfolio, EIL extended its capacity-building efforts through ‘WeLead’, an international women leadership program in collaboration with ITEC-MEA. Under this initiative, EIL organised a skill development program for 30 women professionals from 25 countries during 3-16 September 2025, aimed at strengthening leadership capabilities and global professional networks. The program received appreciation from both the participating members and the MEA, apart from our own ministry.
In addition, EIL successfully conducted a 10-week multidisciplinary technical training program for Mongolian delegates with participants ranging from industry engineers to university faculty and students, covering refinery engineering, sustainability, safety, R&D exposure, and cultural immersion.
Overall, the learning and development initiatives of EIL have contributed greatly to the top line of the company in the past few years by organising industrial training programs for the industry.
As India navigates a complex and energy transformation, EIL is well positioned to evolve into a trusted and preferred engineering and technology partner for the industry that not only delivers projects, but also helps shape resilient, secure, and sustainable infrastructure both in India and in the international market fully aligned with the country’s long-term development goals.
Apart from a number of collaborating agreements with industry, academia and national laboratories in India and overseas, in 2025, EIL signed MoUs with Aramco Asia India (AAI) for business potential in India, Dangote group for the second train of Africa’s biggest refinery project and BP Business Solutions India Pvt Ltd exploring opportunities in the energy sector projects.
EIL also signed an MoU with Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd and also executed an MoA with HPCL for various Projects. Additionally, HPGRDC (HP Green R&D Centre) entered into a MoA with EIL as an exclusive ‘Technology & Engineering Partner’ for engineering, marketing, and commercialisation of the HP-PSA (Hydrogen Pressure Swing Adsorption) technology.
These partnerships demonstrate EIL’s strategic expansion both domestically and internationally across the oil and gas, refining, petrochemicals, and energy transition sectors during 2025.
On R&D front, in 2025, EIL has inked an MoA with IIT Roorkee for development of technology for ‘Direct CO2 Conversion to Dimethyl Ether through Catalytic Hydrogenation’, an MoA with HPCL for H2 PSA Technology, and an MOU with IIT Kanpur for joint research in the field of hydrocarbon, petrochemicals, energy technology and commercialise such jointly-developed technologies. These R&D collaborations would be crucial to enhance our portfolio in the area of conducting translational R&D.
Collaboration will remain a key driver of our growth. By strengthening partnerships with industry leaders, academic institutions, and global organisations, we will unlock new opportunities to take EIL to greater heights.
