Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

Twitter

Another of his success stories is establishing One Mahindra, an intranet portal that provides a platform for information sharing across the group. It was not an easy ride as Tawde had to deal with change management issues in terms of data security and regulatory compliance. Tawdes success mantra: be open to learning from all.

Arvind Tawde, senior VP & CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra

Big Leaps Toward Success
After serving Wipro BPO for close to five years, Garela joined Deutsche Bank two years ago. From his long stint at Nelco to Tata Elxsi, Satyam Infoway and Refco Sify Securities, came the assignment at Broadband Solutions (an Enron company). As a network manager in the company, he handled the network setup for the international hosting center at Mumbai. A skilled orator and technology enthusiast, Garela has many successful projects to his credit.

He has been the brain behind planning and implementation of fiber connectivity from the node to MTNL exchange using 34 Mb and 140 Mb MUX equipment; and migration of backbone from IP to ATM using Cisco IGX Stratacom platform at Satyam Infoway, where the services went live within fifteen days of receipt of the ISP license.

Rajiv Garela, CIO, Deutsche Bank

Bringing IT to Choupals
A single sentence would be enough to describe VVR Babus contribution to Indian IT: he is the main technology architect of ITCs now globally recognized e-Choupals. The project that showed to the world how it is possible to use technology to bridge the urban-rural divide, took technology to a large set of farmers and is today probably the only such project that has smoothly transitioned from the pilot stage. A part of the company since 1979, while one end of his spectrum of achievements is represented by e-Choupals, the other is his contribution to ITC Infotech, a global IT services firm within the group. Here he was responsible for setting up a few horizontal and vertical business units, and led the quality initiative.

VVR Babu, CIO, ITC

A Shining Star
After working for two organizations, Nilesh Sangoi got his break when he joined Star Network and worked his way up to assistant VP. During the decade long stint, Sangoi was involved in setting up end-to-end IT infrastructure for KBC 2 and 3 contestant selection process. This involved complete coordination between the software development team, call center, voice and sms telecom providers, production house, auditors and internal business stakeholders, says Sangoi.

Keen to face new challenges in life, Sangoi joined Meru Cabs as CTO where he is being given an opportunity to work with a broad management perspective enriching business understanding.

Nilesh Sangoi, CTO, Meru Cabs

Telecom Loyalist
With an MS in Information Management Systems, Navin Chadha, the CIO of Tata Teleservices, is not someone who has accidentally landed up in the CIOs role, nor is he an EDP guy who gradually climbed the ladder. Yet Chadha remains loyal to a single verticaltelecom. If the CIO has to appreciate the finer aspects of business needs, understanding the domain is a must, he says, adding that telecom, where IT is so core that sometimes they are inseparable, provides the best opportunity to try out ideas that can have a direct impact on business. Apart from Tata Teleservices, Chadha has worked for AT&T Wireless in the US, where he has worked on SOX implementation devising the companys offshore strategy. In India, he had earlier worked with Idea Cellular.

Navin Chadha, CIO, Tata Teleservices

The Prince of IT
Azariah joined MRF in 2006 after decades of experience in various enterprises steering numerous IT initiatives. His key mandate at MRF: aligning the various business processes with IT. Says Azariah, Any new technology brings in a massive cultural change that has to be managed. When the CIO tries to infuse fresh technology, it brings huge change and the CIO has to successfully engineer that change. At MRF Azariah drove the implementation of Lotus Mail and a BPR exercise, and ultimately steered a mammoth SAP deployment in 2007. He is not stopping at that; in the pipeline is an SCM and CRM roll out.

Prince Azariah, CIO, MRF

In Technicolor
He is not a techie in the correct sense of the term considering that he worked his way to IT after wearing different hats ranging from sales, engineering, and marketing. Choksi joined Asian Paints in 1992 and now officiates as vice president corporate planning and IT in the company. He has been the driving force of technology implementation in the not so IT-savvy business of manufacturing paints. He implemented technology solutions across the company in tune with the business objectives. He factored in cost, newer technologies and its ability to integrate with Asian Paints business. His vendor selection strategy has been meticulous. He helped introduce several features on the website which any prospective buyer can use before deciding to actually buy the product. Even Ask Aparna where a live agent is available to respond to customer queries. He feels customers should understand the true value of outsourcing and thinks that they should have good data on how IT was delivered prior to outsourcing.

Manish Choksi, chief, corporate strategy & Cio, Asian Paints

Charting Strategies
A BTech from IT-BHU, and a MS from Clemson University, USA, in civil and systems engineering, Bhushan Akerkar joined AC Nielsen in 2003. Prior to this he was head of the IT department in the E&C division of Larsen & Toubro.

It was back in 2004 when Bhushan implemented a large-scale project of connecting all the major branches of the company through an Internet VPN solution to eliminate the downtime involved in data transfer. Since then Bhushan has introduced many projects like bringing in NetApp advanced storage solutions, ERP, SCM and CRM programs. Bhushan is also responsible for charting out the IT strategies for the organization.

Bhushan Akerkar, executive director It, AC Nielsen South Asia

Realizing Dreams
Sunil Gujral is one of the few CIOs who actually tried his hand at entrepreneurship and built a successful company, Futuresoft where he still serves as a director. The world, though knows him as the person who literally translated Raman Roys BPO vision into reality by implementing the technology for Spectramind. Not to forget, unlike today, technology (actually regulations associated with technology) was the biggest roadblock to building a call center business those days. Apart from spending significant time in VSNL and DoT, he had to travel to Singapore to plead specialized call center technology vendors to come to India. If the situation has completely reversed now, some credit is due to pioneers like Gujral.

Sunil Gujral, co-founder, EVP and CTO, Quatrro

In Quatrro, Gujral is busy smoothly integrating diverse technologies of acquired companies while experimenting on how he could use new technologies like web 2.0 to create business advantage for his clients.

The Hi-flier
An engineering graduate with a basket full of experience, Pal is constantly struggling to make IT the identity of the company. And it has not been an easy ride. The prime reason: in aviation we are constantly running against time. The recession has increased pressure on IT to see how every penny can be saved. In these tough times Pal has a useful piece of advice for CIOs: Have a microscopic look at each and every function and try to automate it. This is the only way to save time, and money.

Virender Pal, cto, SpiceJet

Political Change Agent
As head of the IT cell of the BJP, Bora, 34, has a very clear vision. He wants to make BJP the most automated political party in the world, in a time of less than three years. Hes well on his way to achieve this mission too. A BJP mail and messenger, video telephony, a totally virtualized infrastructure, and a dedicated team for IT implementation are some of the things he has achieved in about a years time.

Page(s)   1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8