Gopal Krishna Mukerjea was born in Darbhanga on 15th April 1961. Darbhanga is situated in the northern part of the state of Bihar in India, close to the bordering districts of Nepal. District is mostly rural with old town of Darbhnga Raj as its divisional head quarter.
Gopal spent most of his childhood in cities of Kanpur and Allahabad where his father served in Audit & Accounts department of the central government of independent India. Though his father travelled to different locations due official postings, the family spent most of their time in UP due to children’s education, occasionally joining senior Mukerjea on holidays.
Gopal developed many hobbies and pursued them along with education which was given prime importance as per family tradition. His first hobby was cooking which he picked up helping his mother in the kitchen; he picked up recitation from his father and elder sister, particularly Tagore, Shelly, Keats, Byron, Wordsworth and Nazrul. Gopal took great interest in poets in Hindi like Nirala, Dinkar, Prasd, Pant Mahadevi Verma to name a few. Gopal was also introduced to many authors in English, Bengali, Hindi, and other languages that were translated in to English by his father and also took keen interest in philosophy, theology and religions practiced by different people. He spent great deal of time to read politics, economics and history to understand the connection of the present with the past. However his first love was science and took keen interest in physics.
During his early days Gopal participated in stage performance and won quite a few awards. Creative art, cartoon, photography, travelling, wild life and sports are some of the other hobbies that remain an essential part of his life.
Gopal completed his schooling from Allahabad, after which he joined prestigious Muir Central College, the science faculty of the Allahabad university with a view to pursue physics, mathematics and statistics, however he changed his mind after one year and joined Harcourt Butler Technological Institute Kanpur for B.Tech. in mechanical engineering. HBTI (now autonomous university) is one of the oldest and highly respected engineering colleges in India. Gopal took interest in machine design and his electives were Automobile engineering and unconventional methods of machining, he did his project thesis on thermoelectric refrigeration system of 1/20 ton capacity. Gopal graduated in 1982 and was first to get a job during campus interview. He joined JK Cement works in their project department a few days after he wrote his final exams for graduation. Gopal went back to studies in 1995 and joined Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management under Calcutta University as full time evening student with Financial Management as major and Marketing Management as minor specialization, his thesis was related to preparing case for fresh infusion of equity (share holder/ IPO/Private equity) based on past performance and future projections. Gopal did well and enjoyed his association with the oldest business school in the country.
Back in 1982 it was a great experience for him to join a team which had highly experienced and knowledgeable engineers from FLSmidth of Denmark, Larsen & Tubro and JK Cement Works. Grabbing the opportunity he worked hard and won praise of his seniors, yet he could pursue his social activities in the officers club and played table tennis, basket ball and cricket to keep fit. However his desire to travel and meet different people made him choose Sales & marketing career for Industrial products where he could continue to stay in touch with technology.
Greaves Cotton provided him the platform that Gopal was looking for and it was beginning of a 14 years association. He initially worked for David Brown Division (David Brown of Huddersfield UK) and sold Industrial gear boxes manufactured by the then world leader. It gave him opportunity to travel, meet people and get a first hand insight in to a wide spectrum of Industries and Institutions. Later Gopal sold drive systems, variable speed eddy current drives, AC- variable frequency/ voltage drives, fluid couplings, mechanical couplings, Ruston and MWM diesel generating sets, oil filters, boilers, steam traps, road rollers and pumps to highly demanding and competitive markets. He was entrusted with application development on all India basis at an early age. Gopal was instrumental in developing a number of product variants and was also member of project implementation team for a green field project.
In November 1995 Gopal left Greaves Cotton as Sales Manager of the business group – Power Transmission and joined Indian Container Leasing Company Limited, where ICICI venture was the major stake holder and Transamerica of USA (one of the top three leasing companies worldwide). This assignment gave him deep insight in to financial products like leasing and hire purchase, shipping and logistics industry. This assignment gave opportunity to work closely with senior executives from Transamerica. He took keen interest in refrigerated products and learnt the technical nuances, eventually this experience opened new avenues for the company in providing customized solutions for cold chain logistics for still nascent Indian market. Having first mover advantage Gopal could kick start new business in this area with renowned multinationals and leading Indian brands that produced chocolates, ice-cream, butter and other perishable products.
Cold chain initiative opened a sizeable opportunity for the company and Gopal got involved more and more in cold chain logistics. Later on this business along with four other businesses became four verticals of the company. During his tenure Gopal was instrumental in forming partnership with different European companies and some far eastern companies for technology tie up. Later he became MD & CEO of the company. By the time he left the company in November 2009 after an association of nearly 14 years he had set up three new factories and started a number of leasing and logistics service products.
Gopal joined KCT group in December 2009 as CEO and set up a new company as 100% subsidiary, he also put up a green field manufacturing plant in record time. This turned out to be a state of the art plant that could boast of the top class technology and equipments sourced from the very best in their field from Europe, India and other countries. While in his earlier assignment Gopal implemented SAP, here he implemented Oracle ERP system. By the time he left KCT in the end of April 2014 the venture had produce many first time products including concept to application products like ready to use ‘Cellar Pit’ for oil exploration Industry.
