Padma Shri for Ashok Khade, the Dalit entrepreneur who built DAS Offshore

Ashok Khade, the managing director of DAS Offshore Engineering Private Limited, has been conferred the Padma Shri for 2026 in the trade and industry category, an honour that celebrates one of India's most striking entrepreneurial journeys. The Ashok Khade Padma Shri recognition rewards a rise from acute poverty to the leadership of a company that serves the offshore oil and gas sector, and Khade dedicated the award to his mother and family, crediting their sacrifices for his success.

His story has long been held up as an example of what is possible against the odds, and it resonates well beyond the world of heavy engineering.

A childhood shaped by hardship

Khade was born around 1955 in Ped, a village in the Tasgaon area of Sangli district in Maharashtra, into a Dalit family. He was one of six children. His father worked as a cobbler and his mother as a daily wage labourer, and the family often went without. Those early years of deprivation and social exclusion shaped a determination to build a different life.

After his schooling, Khade moved to Mumbai and joined Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders in 1975 as an apprentice draftsman, later earning a diploma in mechanical engineering. He worked there for over 15 years, rising to an executive role in the quality control department, and in the 1980s was part of a team sent to West Germany for a submarine project. That exposure to international engineering standards planted the seed of entrepreneurship.

What the Ashok Khade Padma Shri rewards

In 1993, Khade co-founded DAS Offshore with his brothers Datta and Suresh, the company taking its name from the initials of the three brothers. The timing, in the years after the 1991 economic reforms, opened up opportunities in the oil services industry. After a series of smaller subcontracts, a significant early break came through work for Mazagon Dock, his former employer, with supplies often secured on credit from people he had worked with for years.

From there the company grew into a diversified industrial group working in fabrication for offshore platforms and shipbuilding, with clients that have included ONGC and other large energy firms. Today DAS Offshore employs in the region of 4,000 people. Khade's life featured in the book Dalit Millionaires, and he has been associated with the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, known as DICCI, which works to widen entrepreneurship among under represented communities.

What does an offshore engineering firm actually do

For readers unfamiliar with the sector, offshore engineering refers to the building and maintenance of the large steel structures that sit out at sea to extract oil and gas, along with the platforms and support systems around them.

It is demanding, capital intensive work that calls for precision welding, fabrication and the ability to operate safely in harsh marine conditions. Companies in this space supply and service the rigs and platforms used by energy majors. Building a firm capable of this from scratch, without family wealth or industry connections, is what makes Khade's achievement notable.

His recognition carries a significance that goes beyond business metrics. As a Dalit entrepreneur who built a globally competitive enterprise from rural poverty, Khade has become a symbol of aspiration for many from marginalised backgrounds. For India's wider entrepreneurial community, the Padma Shri affirms a simple idea, that talent and grit, given a fair opening, can build enterprises that stand on their own in tough global markets.