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According to him, the vast experience not only helped in learning different technologies but also helped in understanding business and different profiles of people. At Super Religare Laboratories, Pillai led the implementation of its core system, the centralized lab operation system. Some aspects of the system like the remote report delivery printing and report delivery on the Web have been among the firsts in healthcare IT systems.

Today as the chief information officer of Super Religare Laboratories (formerly SRL Ranbaxy) and of Religare Wellness (formerly, Fortis HealthWorld), Pillai is juggling the task of managing the expectations, requirements and different sets of issues of the multiple stakeholders that the IT systems have to deal wit namely the doctors, patients, franchisees, scientific and other support systems.

G Radhakrishna Pillai, CIO, Super Religare Laboratories & Religare Wellness

Multi-faceted CIO
Ashok Kumar Wahi is what most CIOs today badly want to be: a business leader in his own right. While Wahi has held CIO functions in many large enterprises, he has handled an equal number of other responsibilities including HR, business development, corporate planning, consulting, and BPO operations.

I have never been a functional person, he says, If you think only about technology and products, you feel the rest of the world is irrational. But the reality is that nothing is wholly right or wholly wrong. Nothing is wholly black or white.

Ashok Wahi, head, strategic Initiatives, Aksh Optifibers

Sustaining IT Countrywide
Back in 2004, Bagdadi was the third person to join CFC India Services. Since then, he has been involved in building and managing secured technology, enabling infrastructure framework, interconnectivity, and expanding his technology team. It was here that he achieved the huge task of building and managing a highly secured technology infrastructure and grew it at multiple geographical levels ensuring a risk-free operation for the parent company related to back end-transaction processing.

Bagdadi has implemented many large projects in CFC including ERP, WAN, CRM and software development support facilities. He has also built IT infrastructure for three BPOs in the last four years.

Anwar Bagdadi, SVP And CTO, CFC India

Retails Tech Face
The RPG Group has been one of the early movers in the retail space with brands like Foodworld, but it was Spencers which spread its wing across major cities. It would not have been possible without creating and managing appropriate IT infrastructure. The technology face of the RPG group is Amit Mukherjee who, in a short span of about 2 years, has ensured that all retail formats (stores, Books & Beyond and Music World) of RPGs business, runs smoothly providing a high degree of customer satisfaction.

Apart from retail, he is also the one who spearheaded Saregama, becoming Indias first media-entertainment company to implement SAP solutions for its intellectual property management. A veteran of 17 years, Mukherjee is a post graduate in computer science. As the head of Reliance Energys business application team, he was instrumental in building an integrated new billing and customer care system in a record 12 months, hugely enhancing the companys service levels. He also worked briefly for SAP as a solution architect and at HP as the head of its services business for the manufacturing vertical.

Amit Mukherjee, group CIO, RPG Enterprises

XX Challenger in a XY World
In an age when mathematics was the nemesis of all girls, Madbhavi graduated in statistics and went on to do a post graduation in Applied Mathematics from Carleton University. At a time when women in the IT industry were hard to come by, Madbhavi began her career with TCS and worked her way up to become a CIO in 10 years time.

As a hands-on CIO who is tuned into her users requirements, Madbhavi has also worked on the HR Information System project. With IT driving business at FCB Ulka, the last 11 years have been extremely satisfying for Madbhavi. A hands-on CIO, she does not sit back waiting for users to ask for automation, but goes ahead and asks them what they want.

Ritu Madbhavi, VP, IT, FCB Ulka

Cyber Age Arjuna
When I started out on the field, I always wanted to be like the EDP manager who works in a glass cabin, says Arun Gupta. And like Arjuna, never losing sight of his goal, Gupta took measured steps and transformed the way companies function.

Beginning his career as a customer service engineer at NELCO, he moved to OMC Computers where he installed the first UNIX machine for commercial computing. At Great Eastern Shipping he automated the bulk carrier division, tanker division, and the real estate operations bringing the company at the cutting-edge of IT adoption. At Great Eastern he implemented Oracle Financials in India for the first time.

His claim to fame however was his tenure at Pfizer where he created systems for the field force. Gupta was also involved with setting up centers of excellence in India and was responsible for conceptualizing new systems. One of his key contributions was the India sourcing strategy for Pfizer globally.

In each of his earlier stints Gupta has learned vital lessons that have made him what he is today. Hes learnt that in IT business comes first; process is vital; information in time is critical; and IT works 24x7. Gupta has helped Shoppers Stop across their business interests spanning department stores, hypermarkets, bookstores, and many specialty retail formats.

Arun Gupta, group CTO, Shoppers Stop

The Outsourcing Pioneer
Outsourcing has been the key mantra of Bank of India thanks to the efforts of PA Kalyansunder, the IT head of the bank. He believes in concentrating on core competency while outsourcing the rest. It all began with outsourcing Bank of Indias ATM operations, which was followed by one of the biggest IT outsourcing deals in the Indian banking sector. Bank of India outsourced its IT infrastructure to HP to further strengthen its stated objective of providing anytime and any branch banking. Five hundred and fifty branches were integrated in a record 475 days. The decision to outsource, however, were guided by pressure from competitionboth the Indian private banks and MNCs. He was closely involved with the banks green initiative also. Due to frequent power shortage, the bank started a pilot project on solar power which has been a success.

PA Kalyansunder, GM, IT, Bank of India

Three Decade Young
Been there, done that is how one can put the three decade journey of Bihag Lalaji in a few words. Joining as a resident engineer, Lalaji moved on to Wockhardt where he initiated computerization by automating the distribution system and decentralizing it. In his next stint at Merind, he moved the batch system to online and decentralized the EDP systems. Working for the last 12 years at Ambuja, Lalaji implemented SAP in a record time of 14 months for 2,500 users. The challenge was to bring on eight different platforms on a single system; user training; and to switch from old to new system, Lalaji says.

With building strong teams another of his forte, Lalaji has now moved on to a different role bringing together a team for SAP training and first line support.

Bihag Lalaji, VP (information technology), Ambuja Cement

He Means Business
He has helped transform the way IT is managed at TVS Group. He created a mechanism for vendor selection based on strenuous parameters including customer feedback. Technology has played an important role in helping two TVS entitiesTVS Motor and Sundaram-Claytonto grow their business. He was closely involved in eight successful SAP implementations in his organization with the inhouse team. He facilitated the in-house developed Dealer Management System, an ERP for TVS Motor dealers, and so far 325 dealers have adopted this system that enables seamless interaction with ERP and BI. He has won several awards including CIO Gold Award, CIOL-Dataquest Enterprise Connect, 2007 and SAP ACE Award. He also served as general manager, finance, TVS Motor Company, from 1997 to 2000. He is looking forward to using RFID technology in manufacturing and capturing customer experience online.

TG Dhandapani, corporate CIO, TVS Group

Truly an All-rounder
The opportunity to become the executive vice president of Godfrey Phillips Indias IT and corporate development came after his first job at Indian Oil, where he had joined as an accountant but was finally chosen for the IT team. From there, Bala has gone on to create an indelible footprint in the industry with over thirty years experience in IT. More important than the timeframe, Balas experience has spanned across a number of industries.

Bala has been a strong advocate for understanding the business aspect and its requirementsa philosophy that he has followed across his different job responsibilities as a CIO. As part of the corporate development role, he is involved with strategic planning and business growth perspective, making it easier for him to align IT to the business requirements.

SR Balasubramanian, EVP, IT & corporate development, Godfrey Phillips

Womans Perspective
Taking on the predominantly male bastion, Shobhana Ravi has carved a niche for herself in the IT space. In one of the CIO meets she remarked that a CIO must basically have a strong knowledge of the business process understanding. There are functional/technical heads to assist the CIOs and it becomes the duty to tap the information from these functional heads for accomplishing an effective business solution. And she walks the talk. Under her leadership, TAFE has developed its own data warehousing applications using SAP and Oracle database. Shobhana Ravi has not only redefined the IT set up at TAFE but has infused modern technologies that have enabled the company to accrue more profitability in the competitive automotive space.

Shobhana Ravi, CIO, TAFE

Been There, Done That
A veteran CIO, Arvind Tawde has seen the transition of the group from a functional organization to a process-driven one. Part of the management audit team, Tawde was made head of the newly formed EDP department. In his new role Tawde is credited with overseeing how group synergy can be better utilized through IT. In his stint as the corporate IT head, Tawdes tenure has been fairly satisfying. Under his guidance, the department added value to business by undertaking critical projects like the common customer database.

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