The HP-Compaq merger makes Doraisamy the head of the largest IT group in India, with the combined entity leading in most hardware segments. His job—to make a very difficult merger work in India and maintain the lead that products of the two separate companies enjoyed over the years. It will be Doraisamy and the new HP that will determine vendor strategies in the ongoing year.

Balu Doraisamy
President, HP India

Arguably the most important man in the BPO space in India, Bhasin is full of ideas for transforming ‘back-office’ India. He believes that if the right linkages are formed between the BPO industry and universities, India can have another 45,000 trained students enter the industry. And he is leading by example—against original manpower targets of 10,000, GE already has 20,000 employees in India.

Pramod Bhasin
President, GE Caps

This pioneer in the field of publishing and content services in the IT industry more than rose to the challenge of the slowdown. At a time when most of the competition was getting wiped out, Gupta’s vision helped Cyber Media walk through the year without layoffs or product truncation. What’s more, he went into consolidation mode and launched a school for content creation and management in a tough year.

Pradeep Gupta
Managing Director, Cyber Media (India)*

Despite having taken over as Nasscom chief in the shadow of an illustrious predecessor, the subdued but forthright Karnik has slipped into the role of Indian IT’s brand ambassador with ease. He has successfully hosted the Indian IT and ITeS Strategy Summit 2002, helped identify and counter the Chinese threat, and guided the industry through a very tough year. As for a final verdict on his performance, it’s early days yet.

Kiran Karnik
President, Nasscom

On the threshold of entering his fourth year in office, Mahajan is Indian IT’s best friend in high places. He’s been pivotal in pushing along critical reform in the industry, especially the ICT space. His greatest asset—an amazing rapport with all the players in the industry. His new goal, after the demise of close friend Dewang Mehta—to push the Indian IT brand globally.

Pramod Mahajan
Union Minister for IT, Telecom & Parliamentary Affairs

India’s telecom price warrior has single-handedly managed to bring down abnormally high phone tariffs. He started with national long distance and then shifted to international long distance—forcing others to cut call rates drastically. Interestingly, he did this without his company having started both services. He is now kicking off another price-cut cascade, this time in the mobile space, with flagship Airtel leading from the front.

Sunil Bharti Mittal
Chairman & MD, Bharti Enterprises

He is acknowledged as the ‘Father of Corporate Governance and Disclosure’ in Indian corporate circles. He ushered in an era of transparency in the industry—using extensive financial reporting standards and complete openness, even with the media—at a time when no one had heard of it. Having helped create a 12,000-employee organization from scratch, Murthy has now taken upon himself the task of pushing the ‘IT India Inc’ brand worldwide.

Narayana NR Murthy
Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies

When everyone got together to share the spoils of fiscal 2001-02, no one could question the size of Nadar’s turnover and profits… or equal his kitty when it came to acquisitions and tieups—the perfect consolidation weapons in a slowdown. HCLT ended the year with three acquisitions, three joint ventures and a new subsidiary. And while this cost a total of Rs 188 crore, its cash reserves still rose from Rs 844 crore to Rs 1,256 crore.

Shiv Nadar
Chairman, President and CEO, HCL Technologies

His dream is to see his company enter the Top 5 league in the Indian IT sector. This pioneer of the third-party service concept in India has lately been focusing his energies on pushing Accel ICIM’s software business, having already established a very successful hardware services wing.

NR Panicker
Chairman & CEO, Accel ICIM

"Perform or die"—tough as his diktat sounds, Paul has used strict performance accountability (first to introduce Bottom 5% Policy) and fabulous achievement rewards to drive his division’s strong growth over the last two years. Also, Wipro’s brand identity in the US market has jumped many notches—helping his company survive a very tough year with growth rates still respectable.

Vivek Paul
CEO, Wipro Technologies

If there were to be one face of Indian IT worldwide, that face would have to be that of S Ramadorai, if it were not for the low profile he likes to maintain. In a slowdown year marked by benchings and sackings, this CEO’s vision has seen Asia’s largest software exporter take on 7,000 more employees, to reach a total headcount of 23,000! Call him Keynes of Indian IT.

S Ramadorai
CEO, Tata Consultancy Services

Blame Puri if India seems a very profitable playground for IT hardware manufacturing. In a slowdown year, he has guided MBIL to 102% revenue growth. More importantly, he achieved these numbers in the hardware manufacturing exports field—where few had even identified growth opportunities. What’s more, Moser Baer just doubled capacity, with plans to push up output even further.

Deepak Puri
MD, Moser Baer India

After years of holding top corporate office—with Wipro and Mindtree—Soota is now in the public eye. The first from the IT industry to be named president of key industry association CII, Soota carries industry hopes on his shoulders. He has experience on his side, having held positions in MAIT and in the Prime Minister’s IT Task Force.

Ashok Soota
President, CII

This IAS officer has spearheaded Kerala’s rise on the country’s IT map, rewriting policies to kickstart development and e-gov initiatives. She is chasing a new and ambitious target—that of making Kerala a 100% IT-literate state.

Aruna Sundararajan
IT Secretary, Kerala

Aggression was never thought to be his forte, but Tata put that theory to rest when he outwitted RIL and bagged VSNL. Today, he’s not just transformed his company from a staid Old Economy giant to a New Economy war horse, he is at the forefront of thebrigade that’s changing the face of Indian telecom.

Ratan J Tata
Group Chairman, Tata Sons

His war for low-cost telecom solutions helped develop corDECT—which has now won worldwide acclaim. If that weren’t enough, the IIT (Madras) professor has over 200 research journals to his credit.

Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala
Professor, Electrical Engg, IIT (Madras)

He is the man behind BPCL’s online push, which saw delivery cycles being cut dramatically—from many weeks to just a few days.Through his efforts, BPCL has taken 25% of all its transactions online. Teltumbde’s new objective is to take 90% of Bharat Petroleum Corp’s Rs 40,000-crore business online this year!

Anand Teltumbde
GM (IT), Bharat Petroleum Corporation

For once, management control and IT responsibilities rest with the same man—and ICICI CEO KV Kamath has blended both perfectly to create a financial behemoth of global standards. For him, money is technology and technology is money.

This ‘voice’ of the Indian CIO is better known than the organization he works for. The reason is simple—under Ram’s direction, HDFC Bank has steeped itself in tech-enablement, to an extent where it stands right in the front rows. For Ram, accolades and national recognition have followed. For HDFC, the rewards have been fantastic business growth and branding at par with global players.

CN Ram
Chief Information Officer, HDFC Bank

Premji heads Indian IT’s third-largest group, one that spans the entire gamut of IT solutions—from HW and SW services to peripherals and IT-enabled services. Among the first to insist on quality standards and certification, Premji is acknowledged as the force who drove outsourcing growth in India.

Azim Premji
Chairman, Wipro Ltd

Just running a company that has its processors inside nearly every desktop in the country is enough to get Saini placed on any industry list. But he is much more than that—he’s done development work for years, and was behind the setting up of Intel’s IDC, now being run by Manni Kantipudi.

Avtar Saini
Director (South Asia), Intel Corporation

Leading Reliance into the convergence era, Ambani is living true to his promise—"We will be present in the whole play, end-to-end." What he is referring to is national and international telephony, wireless and data networks with over 2,000 points of presence in India. Do not exclude mobile handsets, the new economics of which may be dictated by RIL.

Mukesh Ambani
Chairman, Reliance Group

In a year when there were few jobs going around, naukri.com stayed afloat due to the instincts of its creator—Bikhchandani.

For a man who often claims it is hard to extract value from the Net, he seems to be passing the tough test with flying colors. Encore CEO Vinay Deshpande is the father of what could be the Maruti equivalent of computers—the ‘common man’s PC’. He is the man behind the Simputer, which, with prices ranging from Rs 10,500 to Rs 23,000, will be capable of running in 11 Indian languages—it could also end up revolutionizing rural Indian connectivity.

Sanjeev Bikhchandani
CEO, naukri.com

Having transitioned from villainy to comedy, Khan has also helped make Bollywood IT-friendly. The man who tickles our funny bone with his ribald dialogues has been penning down every single vignette on a notebook—for the last ten years. Good going in an industry that has no time for computer languages, or anything "technical".

Kader Khan
Actor-Dialogue Writer, Bollywood

What three successive governments couldn’t do in 11 years, Shourie achieved in under two—the divestment program. Of the 22 PSUs that have gone under the auctioneer’s hammer since he took the helm, three—CMC, VSNL and HTL—are from the ICT space. Not only were these divestments critical, they were strategic—all went to a single investor, along with total management control.

Arun Shourie
Union Disinvestment Minister

Now riding the pre-independence wave with his portrayal of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, the media-shy Devgan is a known techno-freak, and took over during the making of home production Raju Chacha. It marked the first instance of heavy technicals and special effects being used by the Indian film industry.

Ajay Devgan
Actor, Bollywood

Venturing into uncharted waters, Majumdar has successfully used the Internet to provide personalized astrological predictions on a one-on-one basis to a global marketplace. Under his helmsmanship, Cyber Astro has seen financial black ink, working on the principles of ancient Vedic astrology.

Satrajit Majumdar
Cyber Astro*