It’s never easy to pick winners when there’s an abundance of talent. And this is probably most true of India’s IT sector where innovation seems to breed more innovation.
It’s never easy to pick winners when there’s an abundance of talent. And this is probably most true of India’s IT sector where innovation seems to breed more innovation. Which is why the high-powered jury that will select the best entries for the Express IT Awards has its task cut out. With entries flooding in across the nine categories for which applications have been invited, Rajan Anandan, Kris Gopalakrishnan, TV Mohandas Pai, R Chandrasekhar and S Sadagopan are going to have to put in long hours.
To be sure, they will be assisted by knowledge partners PwC, but the final call will be theirs. And given the competition is keen, choosing the best can be difficult. In 2014, the competition saw close to 350 entries across seven categories but this time around that number looks like it’s going to be far bigger. Apart from the fact that a clutch of new categories has been included — IT Infrastructure, Software Product of the Year, E-Commerce Solutions and Digital Citizens Solutions — there’s also the desire to take home Indian IT’s most coveted trophy and also to win the appreciation of such an erudite, respected team of professionals.
THE JURY
Rajan Anandan
Managing director of Google India, Rajan Anandan is a well-known angel investor in India and in his home country, Sri Lanka. After working in the US as vice-president and executive assistant to Dell founder Michael Dell, Anandan moved to India in 2006 as country manager, Dell. He then went on to become managing director of Microsoft India before taking up his current assignment at Google.
Anandan holds a BSc in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a MSc in manufacturing systems engineering from Stanford University. Armed with this background in technology, Anandan has made investments in over 60 start-ups in sectors as varied as internet, mobile and SaaS (software as a service). Anandan started his career with McKinsey & Co, where he worked as partner in the Chicago office till 2003. He has worked with several Fortune 500 companies in the US. Today, he is viewed as a key mentor in the start-up world.
S Gopalakrishnan
Senapathy Gopalakrishnan, popularly known as Kris Gopalakrishnan, is a co-founder of Infosys. He has served in various key roles at Infosys as chief operating officer, chief executive officer and managing director. He was also the executive co-chairman and later stepped down from the company as vice-chairman in October 2014.
Kris, who holds a Master’s degrees in physics and computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, has been part of the phenomenal growth journey of Infosys and also of the Indian IT industry.
Kris’ role extended beyond Infosys when he was elected as president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for 2013-14 and served as one of the co-chairs of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2014. In January 2011, the government of India awarded Kris the Padma Bhushan. After his retirement, Kris has been actively involved with philanthropic activities while also nurturing the start-up community. He has donated $35 million to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to set up a centre for brain research. The Infosys co-founder is also the chief mentor of the Startup Village, a tech incubator, in Kerala.
TV Mohandas Pai
TV Mohandas Pai is chairman of Manipal Global Education, a provider of higher education services across the globe driven by a strong technology platform. Pai has been an integral part of the IT industry, playing a stellar role in shaping financial fortunes at Infosys, India’s second-largest IT firm. Pai served as chief financial officer of the company over 1994-2006, a period that saw Infosys become the first Indian company to be listed on Nasdaq.
In2006, he took over as head of human resources at Infosys. He joined the board in May 2000.
Today, Pai is a venture capitalist supporting entrepreneurs as founder of Aarin Capital and Exfinity Fund. He supports various initiatives in the area of education, too. Pai is also actively associated with regulators and has served as a Securities and Exchange Board of India board member.
R Chandrashekhar
NASSCOM president Rentala Chandrashekhar has the distinction of joining the IT industry lobby after being in the government, which arms him with the crucial government perspective. Chandrashekhar has served as chairman of the Telecom Commission and secretary, department of telecommunications, in the ministry of communications and information technology. He established the first-ever Department of Information Technology in the country in Andhra Pradesh, and was its secretary.
Chandrashekhar holds an MSc in chemistry from IIT, Bombay, and an MS in computer science from Pennsylvania State University. The Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration was conferred on him for the year 2007-08. He took over the reins of Nasscom in 2014 from Som Mittal, and has an ambitious goal of growing the Indian IT industry into a $300-billion behemoth by 2020. He also intends to bridge the communication gap between various segments of IT, such as services, products and hardware.
S Sadagopan
S Sadagopan is founder-director of International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Bangalore, one of the first institutions in the country with a special focus on IT. He has taught for more than three decades at several elite institutes, including IIT-Kanpur, IIM-Bangalore and IIT-Madras, besides a stint at Rutgers, State University of New Jersey. Professor Sadagopan also engages with many new-generation institutes set up in India in the past 15 years, notably the IIITs in Thiruvananthapuram, Bhubaneswar and Delhi, the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology in Bengaluru and the Institute of Space Science & Technology in Thiruvanthapuram, to name a few.
A Fellow of UK’s IET (formerly IEE), Computer Society of India and Institution of Engineers (India), Prof Sadagopan also consults extensively for some of India’s largest private and public sector corporations in computing, communications, software, automotive, oil and power industries as well as the social sector. He is a member on the boards of several private and public sector corporations, and also a member of the board of studies of several universities.