GM Rao is an Indian infrastructure entrepreneur and the Founder Chairman of GMR Group, a global infrastructure developer with a strong presence across airports, energy, highways, and urban infrastructure.

A mechanical engineer by training, Mr. Rao hails from a small town in Andhra Pradesh, India. He began his entrepreneurial journey well before India’s economic liberalisation, starting with a single jute mill in 1978. Over the years that followed, he explored diverse business opportunities and ventured into 28 different businesses as a serial entrepreneur.

Following India’s economic liberalisation in the early 1990s, Mr. Rao began to take a more deliberate and focused approach to business. He led the decision to divest several non-core businesses—including banking, insurance, software, breweries, jute, and sugar—in order to concentrate the Group’s efforts on the core infrastructure sector. This period marked a defining phase in GMR’s evolution.

Over more than four decades, Mr. Rao has built GMR Group into one of India’s most respected infrastructure developers. Today, the Group is a diversified and professionally managed organisation with a strong footprint across Airports, Energy, Highways, and Urban Infrastructure, including Special Economic Zones. Many of these sectors were new both to the Group and to the country at the time of entry, yet GMR scaled rapidly and delivered world-class infrastructure assets.

Alongside business growth, Mr. Rao increasingly emphasised institution building. Over time, the Group’s development came to be guided by four pillars—People, Process, Governance, and Technology.

This philosophy is reflected in the GMR Group Vision:

“GMR Group will be an institution in perpetuity that will build entrepreneurial organizations making a difference to society through creation of value.”

Seven core Values & Beliefs were subsequently defined to shape the Group’s distinctive organisational culture.

Mr. Rao believes that “Family must be run like Business and Business must be run like Family.” He further underscores this philosophy by stating that “Strong family governance ensures strong corporate governance.” Long before ESG became a mainstream business priority, he placed sustained emphasis on Environmental, Social, and Governance practices across GMR’s infrastructure assets.

With a strong inclination towards giving back to society, Mr. Rao established the GMR Varalakshmi Foundation nearly three decades ago. The Foundation actively works across education, healthcare, livelihoods, and community development, impacting lives across more than 20 locations in India each year.

Mr. Rao has been conferred with several awards and recognitions over the years. Reflecting his leadership ethos, he maintains that “All the credit goes to my GMR colleagues and my family for their understanding, shared vision, hard work and dedication.”

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