Suparjya swain 
Feature: Leadership in manufacturing is often measured in tonnes produced or costs reduced. But for Mr. Ganesh W. Jirkuntwar, the true measure lies in how responsibly and sustainably those tonnes are made. Today, as the National Manufacturing Head at Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Limited, he is driving one of India’s most ambitious industrial transformations—steering a legacy business toward becoming not just a market leader, but a global benchmark in green manufacturing. With nearly three decades of experience across India, North America, and Europe, Mr. Jirkuntwar brings a rare global-local perspective, blending operational excellence with a vision to make industry a force for clean energy, innovation, and long-term resilience.
Mr. Jirkuntwar’s career began in 1993 with Tata Chemicals in Mithapur, where he built his technical foundations in mining operations. Over the next two decades, he moved through some of the most prominent names in the industry—UltraTech, Lafarge, and L&T—earning recognition for his ability to lead complex operations with precision, safety, and vision. His international assignments in Canada, the USA, and the UK gave him a unique global lens, one that now enables him to blend international best practices with the realities of Indian industry. During his years with Lafarge in North America and the UK, he pioneered initiatives in waste-to-energy and safety culture, achieving zero lost-time incidents for four consecutive years—an achievement that remains a benchmark in industrial operations.
When he returned to Dalmia Cement, it marked not just a professional move but a homecoming to a company whose ethos resonated with his own. In his second innings with the group, Mr. Jirkuntwar has been at the forefront of positioning Dalmia Cement as a global leader in green manufacturing. Under his stewardship, Dalmia has not only become India’s lowest-cost cement producer but has also set global standards for the lowest carbon footprint in the industry. His mantra has been simple yet profound: “clean and green is profitable and sustainable.” This philosophy has guided initiatives ranging from biomass integration and alternative fuels to the ambitious “Grey to Green” roadmap that aims for a carbon-negative transition.
At the helm of manufacturing for one of India’s largest cement producers, Mr. Jirkuntwar brings board-level governance and executive leadership together with a rare passion for people and culture. He is not just a strategist of operations but a builder of organizations. Whether it is succession planning, developing high-performance teams, or embedding digital transformation through AI and predictive maintenance, his leadership has been about preparing Dalmia not only for today’s markets but for the next decades of industrial evolution.
The vision is ambitious yet grounded in practicality. By 2030, Dalmia Cement plans to run entirely on renewable energy, sourcing 70 percent from solar and wind and the rest from waste heat recovery. By 2035, fossil fuels are set to be fully replaced by renewable biomass, municipal waste, and hydrogen. And by 2040, carbon capture and utilization technologies will be scaled to make value-added products while locking emissions into a productive cycle. For Mr. Jirkuntwar, these goals are not distant dreams but strategic milestones backed by investments, innovation, and a committed workforce.
What sets him apart is his ability to connect the dots between profitability and purpose. In an interview, he once remarked that while the per capita cement consumption in India remains below half the global average, the sector’s growth must not come at the expense of the planet. Instead, it must ride on sustainable innovation, whether through supplementary cementitious materials, green fuels, or next-generation technologies like AI-enabled robots and 3D concrete printing. His outlook is firmly rooted in the belief that India’s march towards a $5 trillion economy must go hand in hand with an industrial ecosystem that is cleaner, greener, and future-ready.
The pandemic, which brought many industries to a halt, also tested the resilience of cement manufacturing. For Mr. Jirkuntwar, it became an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of government support, rural demand, and inclusive growth. He saw how capex flows, state-level stimulus, and rural infrastructure projects would not only drive cement demand but also create equitable growth. His ability to interpret these macroeconomic signals and align them with business strategies has ensured that Dalmia Cement remains not just a participant but a shaper of India’s industrial future.
As the company embarks on capacity expansion in Tamil Nadu, Bihar, and Bokaro, with investments of nearly ₹10,000 crore, Mr. Jirkuntwar’s leadership continues to steer the group toward a balance of scale, efficiency, and sustainability. The numbers—48.5 million tonnes of capacity, 35 percent thermal substitution rate by 2025, and 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030—are impressive on their own. But behind these figures lies the steady vision of a leader who believes manufacturing must evolve into a force for good.
Mr. Ganesh W. Jirkuntwar is more than a manufacturing head; he is a strategist, a global thinker, and above all, a believer in the power of industry to transform society. His journey from a mining engineer in Nagpur to a global business leader at the forefront of clean energy and sustainable manufacturing reflects not just personal achievement but also the possibility of reimagining industrial growth in India. In him, the cement industry has found a leader who does not just build factories but shapes the future—one that is cleaner, greener, and more resilient.
