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In his own words, he never wanted to get complacent in a jobwhether it was DSP Merrill Lynch; a local brokerage house SSKI; IL&FS; or the relatively unknown VFS, Kuonis BPO operations. Savlas appetite for taking risks has made him join smaller organizations and build them from scratch.

At Kuoni too he has spearheaded the revamp and centralizing of the complete IT set-up. In fact, the company has grown four times in the last five years, of which he has been associated with it for a good four.

With Kuonis multiple acquisitions, Savla faced the challenge of integrating multiple systems, and centralizing and standardizing them. We had to cope up with the challenge of growth, while simultaneously optimizing the operations, he adds. As the group CIO for Kuoni in India and South Asia and worldwide for VFS, Savla is now working on the two key projects of e-learning and Future Business, and the IT architecture project targeted at standardization and consolidation of infrastructure and applications. His guiding philosophy through all this: use technology for business.

Dhiren Savla, CIO, Kuoni Travels (India)

Dial IT for Outsourcing
This engineer from IIT Delhi defined the entire outsourcing paradigm for the Indian market. He was the architect of the famous 10-year Bharti-IBM outsourcing deal worth $750 mn, which went on to become a benchmark and triggered the domestic outsourcing wave so to say.

Starting as a researcher with IBM Research Labs, Menon feels that while he would never go back to pure R&D, he would continue to be a techie and innovator at heart, Bharti has afforded him this opportunity. With his CIO role, hes also spearheaded the launch of Airtel enterprise service SBU; and has been responsible for alliances with BlackBerry, Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. Over the last few months, he has taken up the customer service portfolio, one of the most critical areas for any telecom company. In his own words, hes on a crusade to fundamentally transform the BPO business model and transform the customer service area from effort orientation to outcome orientation

Jai Menon, group CIO, Bharti Enterprises

Highly Processed
Vijay Sethi has seen both sidesthe vendor and the user. This has not just helped him enhance his CIO role, hes also been able to appreciate the other sidethe vendors and consultantsbetter.

The seven and half year stint with TCS helped in many critical ways. The appreciation for processes has been ingrained into his basic work philosophy and is helping him immensely with his responsibilities at Hero Honda. At Ranbaxy, working with a truly global organization was a high in itself. As Sethi says, We were at the central point, setting up policies and guidelines for other countries operations. That helped in improving my professional skills and gave me creative satisfaction.

When he moved to Hero Honda in 2007, Sethi wanted to experience the challenge of moving to the auto industry at a time when it was going through a rough patch. Reason: in the growth phase a lot of inefficiencies are hidden. When theres a problem then one really starts looking for inefficiencies and removing them using IT as a strategic driver.

Vijay Sethi, VP, information system, Hero Honda

Distis IT Face
Clynton Almeida, the young and energetic CIO at Redington has played an instrumental role in shaping the companys IT infrastructure. Under his technology leadership the company has ramped up its IT backbone to a whole new level. Some of the significant initiatives Clynton spearheaded at Redington in the last few years were the CRM deployment which integrated the companies pre-sales activities across branches, and also enabled it to assess the market potential in terms of how it is placed against competition. Redington is a strong customer-focused organization, and that called for interaction with its customers and potential customers in the best possible way.

Clynton Almeida, CIO, Redington India

The Statesman
Sehgals story is that of a person coming up through the ranks with his grit, expertise and resilience. Starting his journey as a clerk, Sehgal has come a long way. When in 2003 SBI decided to computerize all the branches, he was called to head the team. In a span of seven months, more than 9,000 branches were computerized. Thereafter, he was involved in computerizing all foreign offices on a single platform in 2004. He also spent one year with SBIs joint venture with TCS during its formative year. Since end-2006, Sehgal is looking at the core banking process at SBI. Sehgal is also known for his passion for the environment and has aided a number of projects.

SK Sehgal, GM, IT, State Bank of India

IT Comes AUTOmatically
For Hilal Khan success lies in managing people and their expectations, and change. And hes done that with great aplomb. Today he is not only the CIO for Honda Motors but is also heading the corporate and strategic IT decisions for the other group companies of Honda in India.

For Khan the bigger challenges are constantly living by his definition of a successful CIO: one who has optimized the use of IT, and impacted the bottomline (not just the topline).

Hilal Khan, head, corporate SIS, Honda Motor India

A Techno-prenuer
Jha has many firsts to his credit: the conception and implementation of South East Asias first Broadcast Media Asset Management System for the Essel Group; launching the mobile platform 57575, one of Indias largest short code platform; and associated with launching Indias first live and interactive gaming TV channel, www.myplaywin.com and www.page3flicks.com.

Jha is now heading a digital media venture, DMCL, funded by the Essel Group. As a CEO of the company, he is bringing to fore all his technology acumen and innovative streak.

Ishwar Jha, senior VP, Zee Entertainment Enterprise

Bankable CIO
VK Ramani joined then UTI Bank in 1995 during its inception and has since heralded its evolution to the present day state-of-the-art IT infrastructure. He was part of the management team for setting up the IT systems. Since then he has been successfully leveraging technology for transforming the banking systems. The IT systems rolled-out by him have helped the bank in delivering a range of services in the areas of retail, corporate, treasury and BI. Ramani has also led the channel diversification initiative for retail banking in the company.

VK Ramani, CIO, Axis Bank

Infrastructure Builder
Anantha Sayana played a crucial role when L&T decided to spawn off a separate division under the aegis of L&T Infotech. He has taken up various roles since then ranging from manager to CIO. He is renowned for helping reshape L&T into a modern dynamic company.

Sayana currently heads corporate IT at L&T and is directly responsible for realization of optimum benefits from IT and devising IT strategies. He has received many awards and has also been a past president of the Indian chapter of ISACA.

Anantha Sayana, head, corporate IT, L&T

The Crossover Kid
Chowdhurys story is that of a quintessential tech guy who gravitated toward the management side before finally returning to tech again. After a BTech from IIT Kanpur, he went for a MS from Carnegie Mellon. He then felt the need to understand the business side as well. Thus came a doctorate in Management from Carnegie Mellon. His professional life also mirrors this shift, starting off as a project engineer with Philips India to being a director at KPMG, and managing director at BearingPoint. In 2006, Reliance ADAG appointed him CIO for their telecommunications company. At Reliance Chowdhury is putting his diverse knowledge to best use. He has been responsible for bringing in OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) in the country. He is also regarded as an expert on green.

Sumit Chowdhury CIO, Reliance Communication

Adman @ IT
His profile is quite unusual for a CIO. An ex-navy personnel, Ray DSouza heads the IT at advertising agency Lowe Lintas. The advertising industry spending less on IT was one of the biggest challenges he overcame successfully. He also has the distinction of making the company the first advertising agency in India which implemented an ERP system. He was also instrumental in implementing WAN and VoIP across the agency, and set up a knowledge management system at Lintas. He has been a votary of improving productivity through technology usage.

Ray DSouza, director of systems & technology, Lowe Lintas

A POWERful Man
Dinesh Kumar is a man who thrives on challenges, and NTPC has afforded him plenty. Even the scale of challenges and opportunities at NTPC are large, and Kumar has never faced the difficulty of running out of things to do.

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