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Just about a decade back, there were less than half a dozen people in India with the designation chief information officer. Today, CIOs are the most visibleif not always the most powerfulexecutives in many enterprises. The rise and rise of the CIO within an enterprise is, to a large extent, a global phenomenon; but arguably the rise has been faster and more visible in India. To that end, something about the phenomenon is fairly desi.

The rise of CIOs globally is a well-discussed phenomenon. The importance of information in all businessesright from auto components to aviationhas grown manifold and so has the role of information technology. This has made the job of CIOs one of the most important ones in enterprises, across the world.

The late but sudden ascent of IT people in the corporate hierarchy in India has some more tactical, but important reasons behind it.

First reason is Indias comparatively late growth story, which helped its businesses to leapfrog legacy business practices. India became an important player in global business only after the Narasimha Rao government initiated large-scale reforms and the Bharatiya Janata Party (which incidentally has a designated CIO) continued with those reforms aggressively. This created a conducive environment for Indian businesses to grow, almost half a decade after Indias independence. This made Indian enterprises competing with information right from day one, thus raising ITs profile in enterprises. That created fast growth opportunities for CIOs.

What also helped Indian businesses is the availability of people with the right blend of technology expertise and business acumen. Many of todays CIOs come from companies like TCS, Wipro, HCL and NIIT, where they have balanced between tech and business roles. The fact that Indian companies looked at IT as a growth enabler rather than a tool to minimize cost (as in the West) meant that IT practices from the West could not be borrowed as it is from the developed markets. This created opportunities for IT heads to create solutions from scratch, understanding the unique requirements in India, though technology was no different. This gave them exposure to business early in the career, thus making them better CIOs to take up real strategic roles.

Also, the fact that Indias growth has been driven by services is another important reason for rise of ITs profile within organization.

Finally, India as a major offshoring destination meant new ideas came to India fairly early. For example, no other developing market in the world has gone for strategic total outsourcing so aggressively as many of the Indian companies have done. This has forced CIOs to think more like business people and less like IT delivery guys.

Many other CXOs, however, complain that CIOs are more visible than they are powerful. While that may be true to some extent, the ability to make visible difference to business has of late given them enough power as well.

The DQ CIO Powerlist is a compilation of profiles of 50 such people who have most definitely made a difference to businesses of their respective organizations (present as well as past). They are not merely powerful; some of them are influential as well. They are observed, admired and followed. Some of them are celebrities in their own right. Some of them are more known; some lesser known. Some are high profile, some are not. But one thing is common to all: they have made an impact through IT.

The list has been prepared by a panel comprising three of Dataquest editorial team members and three external consultants, from the industry.

We follow the powerlist with a separate list of Aspirants and one Hall of Fameof people who are no longer active CIOs but their contribution in the recent past is difficult to overlook. While writing profiles we have used a mix of methods to collect information: we have interacted with the CIOs, used inputs from earlier interactions, and used factual data from secondary sources.

Man of Steel
A post-graduate in chemistry from Delhi University, Ajay Kumar Dhir has never regretted the decision to get into IT. And that too at a time when computers were new and programming was less of a career and more of an adventure. He has successfully handled IT and systems responsibilities in many large corporations. While he attributes his success to hard work, he is unequivocal about sharing the credit with his wife, who, he says, has smoothly and effectively handled the responsibilities at home, in his own long absences.

Ajay Kumar Dhir group CIO, Jindal Stainless

Packing IT In
Starting off as a consultant with TCS, Adenwala used his analytical skills to move to SKF Bearings, one of the leading packaging and container companies, where he went on to head the IT function.

Zoeb Adenwala, CIO, Essel Propack

After a short stint as head of IT at Pidilite, Adenwala joined Essel Propack, one of the worlds leading packaging firms that has a turnover of over $300 mn. One of the key achievements of Adenwala has been to align the disparate IT infrastructure spread across twenty five manufacturing units in thirteen countries. Over the past few years, Adenwala has been focusing on putting in BI systems and processes in place, so as to ensure the continued dominance of his firm.

Destinys Man
As someone who began as a finance professional, Chauhan has managed to achieve what many technology experts do not achieve in a lifetime.

At a very early stage in his career, Chauhan was involved with setting up Indias first commercial satellite telecom network and also the screen-based trading system. Once the project was successfully rolled out, Chauhan was designated as the head of business and operations for the equities market in NSE. This incidentally became the largest exchange in India within eleven months of operations and over a period, the third largest exchange in the world by trade volume.

Ashish Chauhan group CIO, Reliance Industries

After a short stint as an entrepreneur, Chauhan joined Reliance Infocomm where once again he was responsible for sorting out the contentious bill-related issues. Incidentally, even though Chauhan was involved with technology right from the start of his career, it was at Reliance where he was formally assigned the designation of a CIO.

Changing Gears
Rajesh Uppal has handheld Maruti Udyogs IT through its evolution right from the nascent systems to its current set-up that enables one car out of the stable every 28 seconds.

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