Lifetime Contribution to Indian IT awards

Nksagar-sagar media Inc: New Delhi December 1, 2011
Mr Natarajan Chandrasekaran, CEO of India's largest IT Services company, Tata Consultancy Services has been conferred the Dataquest IT Person of the Year award for 2011—one of the most coveted honors in Indian IT here at a function held late last evening.

The award is given byDataquest,India's oldest and largest IT magazine, every year to an individual for making extraordinary contribution to Indian IT. The jury led by Mr Pramod Bhasin of Genpact (and 2010 Dataquest IT person of the year) unanimously decided on Mr Chandrasekaran who is regarded as the face of next generation leadership in the Indian IT. In the context of most of the first generation leaders stepping down, there was apprehension about a leadership vacuum being created. The jury felt that Mr Chandrasekaran, through his able leadership has proved that any such fear is unfounded.

A TCS insider, Mr Chandrasekaran also stands as a role model for millions of programmers and engineers as he started as a trainee in TCS and rose to become its top leader.

“Chandra's able leadership is a testimony to the fact that Indian IT companies have it in them to grow extraordinary leadership internally,” noted Pradeep Gupta, Chairman of CyberMedia, the publishers of Dataquest. “The success of Indian IT is not a one-time achievement of only a few individuals,” he added.

Mr Kiran Karnik was awarded for his Lifetime Contribution to Indian IT. Mr Karnik, who led NASSCOM as president for 7 years also headed the government appointed board of Satyam that moved fast and in a transparent manner and was instrumental in establishing the credibility ofIndia in the wake of the Satyam crisis. He is also associated with many educational institutions.

The online IT return filing system of the Income Tax Department, Government of India was awarded the Dataquest Pathbreaker Award for 2011 making the lives of millions of taxpayers smoother, while reducing refund time drastically and enhancing overall efficiency. Between 2004 to 2011, there are five government projects/companies/persons who have won this coveted award.

The 2010 Dataquest IT Person of the year Award had gone to Mr Pramod Bhasin, Vice Chairman (then CEO) of BPO company Genpact. And as the winner of the last year Mr Bhasin headed the jury this year that included Mr Pradeep Gupta, CMD of CyberMedia India (as Vice Chairman); Mr Vijay Thadani, CEO, NIIT; Mr Shankar Aggarwall, Addl Secretary, Department of IT; Mr Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, MD, Dell India; Col H S Bedi, CEO, Tulip; Ms Amrita Gangotra, CIO, Airtel; Prof. Pankaj Jalote, Director, IIIT Delhi, and Mr Shyam Malhotra, Director, CyberMedia India.

The awards, now in the 19th year, were conferred at a glittering ceremony in the presence of industry leaders and leading CIOs. The awards night this year also included the PC Quest Best IT Implementaation awards, given by PC Quest, another CyberMedia publication.

Dataquest also honored top manufacturers, service providers and institutions based on their Dataquest Top 20 rankings for FY 2010-11 and their performance in various surveys conducted by the magazine throughout the year.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) retained its top position as the No 1 IT company and No 1 IT exporter. It also bagged the newly instituted Top Engineering Services company award.

The Dataquest Top Personal Systems company award went to DellIndiafor recording highest combined revenue in sales of desktops and laptops.

Hewlett Packard (HP)Indiawon the Top Server Company award while the newly instituted Top Storage Company award went to EMC India. With dominant market share, HP also won the Top Imaging and Printing Company for 2010 making it a total of two awards.

CiscoIndiawon the Top Networking Company award for recording the highest sales in networking equipment during 2010-11. The IT training pioneer NIIT won the award for Top Training Company for yet another year.

IBMIndia remained ahead of others and won the top IT Services Company (India Market) award. The pioneering BPO Company Genpact with revenues of over one billion dollars bagged the Top BPO company award. Ingram Micro India bagged the Top Distribution Company award for 2011. SAPIndiatopped the software products sales to bag the Top Software Company award for 2011.

Despite tough competition from new pure play smart phone makers and Indian companies, Nokia continued to lead the smart phone market and bagged the Top Smartphone Company award for 2011.

HCL Infosystems won the Best Employer (IT) award based on its No 1 rank in DQ-CMR Best  Employer Survey (IT) 2011. BPO firm, vCustomer won the Best Employer BPO award for the fifth time in a row.IITBombay won the Top T School award based on its No 1 rank in DQ-CMR Top T School Survey 2011. It was the winner last year too.

The winners are selected by a jury of eminent individuals from IT industry, IT user organizations and academicians among others. Some of the past IT persons of the year include Infosys’ NR Narayana Murthy, HCL's Shiv Nadar, Wipro’s Azim Premji, NIIT’s Rajendra S Pawar, Bharti's Sunil B Mittal, Genpact's Pramod Bhasin, Cognizant’s Lakshmi Narayanan and former IT Secretary N Vittal.