The chairman of shipping company KC Maritime since 2019, Gautam Chellaram has also had a range of other management roles with the company. From 2011, he took charge of establishing its Singapore headquartered company, which specialises in platform supply vessels, and served as its CEO. The company and its antecedents have more than a century of history: founded in Chennai in 1916 by Gautam’s great-grandfather Kishinchand Chellaram, and named after him, it was for its first six and a half decades a trading company, after starting in the textile business.

In the 1980s, it made a move into the dry bulk shipping industry, and it’s never looked back, with KC Maritime incorporated in 1999. Gautam is also a non-executive director of real estate investment manager Mordil Properties, and is extensively involved in philanthropic activities through his family’s Kishinchand Chellaram Foundation.