Shri Ashwani Kumar Datt is Chairman & Managing Director of Navratna Defence PSU Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL). He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering in 1972. He joined BEL at Bangalore in January 1973 and has seen the company grow from a single Unit to multiple Units and Strategic Business Units.

In May 1973, he was assigned to the team which set up the second unit of BEL at Gaziabad.He succeeded in indigenisation of major subsystems,bringing in significant strategic self reliance and cost advantage.he was responsible for establishing the ISO 9000 system in BEL gaziabad.He was amongst the first Lead Assessors for ISO 9000 Quality System and senior Assessors for CII Business excelent award.

As General Manager of the Military Radar Strategic Business Unit (SBU) at BEL-Bangalore, he succeeded in obtaining major orders from the Indian Army and successfully met the increased expectations of the customers for spares and product support for a very large population of Radars deployed all across the country and achieved a record turnover growth of almost Rs.1 crore per employee.

He has extensive experience in Development & Engineering, Production, Quality Assurance and installation / commissioning of complex Radar & Communication Systems. Before his elevation as CMD in May 2009, he was Director (Other Units) of BEL and headed 8 of the 9 Units of BEL located at Ghaziabad, Panchkula, Navi Mumbai, Kotdwara, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Machilipatnam. He also had the additional responsibility of managing BELOP, Pune, a subsidiary of BEL, as Director-in-charge.

As CMD of BEL, he has achieved new milestones in terms of growth of order book and profitability with enhanced thrust on focus areas such as new product development, offset business, diversification and contract manufacturing.

During several assignments, he has received intensive training in India and abroad on Project Management, Technology Transfer and Quality Management Systems. He has travelled abroad widely on several key business assignments.