A DATAQUEST TRIBUTE: The IT Indians

Abraham
Thomas

MD & CEO, IBM India

When Thomas joined IBM’s Singapore unit in 1986 as a trainee, little did
he know that 14 years later, he would head the company in one of its most
challenging markets–India. As MD and CEO, Thomas–an MBA from Singapore–oversees
and manages IBM’s sales and marketing, services and exports business in India.
For eight consecutive years, he made it to IBM’s Hundred Percent Club for
exceeding his sales quota and was awarded IBM’s Asean and South Asia General
Manager Award for ‘Outstanding Business Performance’ in 1997.

Arjun
Malhotra

CEO, TechSpan

Born in Calcutta in 1949, Malhotra has studied at Doon School, IIT Kharagpur
and Harvard Business School. And then Arjun Malhotra helped co-found one of
India’s largest technology companies in 1976–HCL. He took over the US
operations of the group in 1989, ran the HCL-HP joint venture in India in 1992
and consolidated and grew HCL Australasia operations in Hong Kong, Australia and
New Zealand. He left to found his own firm–TechSpan–in 1998, with funding
from Goldman Sachs.

Ajai
Chowdhry

chairman & CEO

HCL Infosystems

When HCL was founded in 1976, there were only 15 computers in all of India–so
Chowdhry and his partners created the ‘computer culture’ in the country.
Chowdhry has been largely responsible for driving international growth at HCL
Insys. He set up HCL’s operations in Singapore in 1980 and since then, has
covered South Asian Markets, including Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and
Indonesia. Chowdhry took over the reins in 1994 and has successfully
transitioned the company from a hardware-only focus to a premier technology
integration company.

Arun
Jain

CMD, Polaris Software Lab

Jain is a first-generation entrepreneur who promoted Nucleus Software Group in
1986, with the aim of creating world-class services company. In 1993, Jain
started Polaris Software Lab with development centers in Chennai and Noida.
Since then, Polaris has carved a niche for itself in the BFSI segment, and is
one of the fastest-growing IT companies in India.

Pravin R Gandhi

Pravinbhai, as he is called, is a stalwart in Indian IT. He has always been a
man of various occupations. He co-founded one of India’s early IT companies,
Hinditron Computers.He was significantly involved in getting DEC (of
minicomputer fame) to India. His insight in to the dynamics of the technology
business has endured the test of times. Down to earth and brash, Pravinbhai
wields tremendous influence over the industry. In his latest avatar, he is part
of $30-million angel fund, Infinity Technology Investments.

NR
Narayana Murthy

Few remember him now as the first designer of the ‘Basic Interpreter’
implemented in India. Or as the man who was part of a team that built the
country’s first multi-user OS. Which is as it should be. Murthy is listed here
for creating a globally-respected Indian company. It had little to do with
Infosys being the first to be listed on Nasdaq, and more to do with what Murthy
projected for himself and his company–openness, honesty and savvy.

Vinay Deshpande

chairman and CEO, Encore Software

Even though he is mostly associated with the Simputer, 54-year-old Vinay
Deshpande, a Stanford alumnus, is also the co-founder of Processor Systems and
PSI Data Systems. He also co-founded Encore Software in 1990. He has been a
member of the R&D working group of the Prime Minister’s Information
Technology Task Force set up in 1997-1998. The World Economic Forum has also
named him as one of the ‘100 Technology Pioneers’ for 2001 & 2002, for
being engaged in the most innovative technology areas.

Ajit
Balakrishnan

chief executive officer, rediff.com

Ajit Balakrishnan is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of
Rediff.com India. Balakrishnan is also a director of Rediffusion-Dentsu, Young
& Rubicam Ltd, where he has served since March 1993, and a director of
Rediffusion Advertising Private Ltd and PSI Data Systems Ltd. He holds a BSc
degree in Physics from Kerala University and a post-grad management diploma from
the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Sanjiv Sidhu

founder, chairman & CEO, i2 Technologies

What made Sanjiv Sidhu found i2 Technologies in 1988, when he was about to
be made V-P of Texas Instruments? The answer lies in his firm belief that
information systems can greatly help in arriving at intelligent decisions.
Today, Sidhu has established a $ 200-million technology company that boasts of
an array of blue chip clients like IBM, 3M and many more. Probably one of the
most significant contributions made by Sidhu is his visionary thinking–that
supply chain solutions over the Net and its impact on business efficiencies
cannot be overstated.

Ashank
Desai

CMD, Mastek

One of the founder members of Mastek, he has played a pivotal role in making
it a Rs 265-crore global IT services company. His vision and leadership
abilities have helped Mastek develop strong export markets in the US, Europe and
Asia-Pacific. He was also one of the co-founders and past-chairman of Nasscom
and has been involved in all major initiatives taken by the apex body in India.

Arun Netravalli

president, Bell Labs

An alumnus of IIT Bombay, today he is President of the world’s largest
R&D organization, to become the night leader at Bell Labs (the R&D unit
of Lucent). Earlier, he was executive vice-president of Lucent Technologies and
has been with Bell Labs for the last 27 years. He is also a known expert in the
field of multimedia communications and the one who pioneered digital images and
video compression technology. His work on high-definition television has earned
him an Emmy. He has authored 140 technical papers, co-authored three books and
holds 60 patents in the area of human interfaces, picture processing and digital
television.

Ashok
Soota

Soota began his career with the Shriram Group in 1965 and rose to become CEO of
Shriram Refrigeration. By the time he left, he had turned around a company that
had been in the red for four years. In 1984, he became CEO of the Rs 7-crore
Wipro Information Technology. By the time he left in 1999, he’d brought in
many changes that triggered runaway growth. The entrepreneurial bug caught him
and he co-founded MindTree Consulting–an e-biz firm.

Bharat Goenka

This is a refreshing story–even an unusual one. Shyam Sunder Goenka, BCom,
manufacturer of spare-parts for textile mills, traditional Marwari businessman
and father. Bharat Goenka, BSc, son. One day, father told son that if he could
make a software accounting package that even he could use, they probably had a
winner on their hands. The son did just that and the father-son duo formed
Peutronics in 1986–now called Tally. In the years since, Tally has held strong
and grown to the extent of almost becoming a generic name. It is even included
in the curriculum of the Indian Institute of Chartered Accountants for students
taking up their articleship.

Ashok
Jhunjhunwala

Jhunjhunwala is an authority in technology, telecommunications, computer
networks and fibre optics. Over the years, through sheer hard work, dedication,
passion and creativity, he has explored the worlds of engineering and technology
and championed the cause of technology and innovation. Chennai-based Polaris
Software Lab recented inducted Jhunjhunwala, who is head of the department of
electrical engineering, at IIT Chennai, onto its board.

Avtar
Saini

director, Intel

In late 1999, Avtar Saini was appointed to head the South Asia operations of
Intel. He has been with Intel for the last 20 years, having started out as micro
architect and logic designer on the Intel 486 processor. In 1989, he co-led the
Pentium processor design team, where he managed the chip design and its eventual
ramp-up into volume production. He holds seven patents for his work in
microprocessor design, and started Intel’s India development center in
Bangalore.

Asim Ghosh

managing director, Hutchison Max Telecom

Asim Ghosh, as managing director of Hutchison Max Telecom, is responsible for
the overall business and spearheads the company’s growth and leadership
position. He has held senior executive position with Hutchison Whampoa in Hong
Kong, managing a group of 13 consumer goods business units with operators in
Hong Kong, China and South-East Asia in the AS Watson Division. Ghosh has had
successful stints in America, Canada and the Far East earlier.

Azim
Premji

He left college midway and came home from Stanford to take over his father’s
oils and pulses business on his death. He grew that into a more than Rs
3,000-crore IT business–among the best-known Indian IT brands abroad. But it’s
not merely for his business acumen that he is renowned. What Premji is and will
be remembered most for is his unceasing vision of Wipro as primarily a
technology and IPR-driven company.

Dr Vinay Bharat Ram

president, DCM Group

He came from Harvard to join the quality control department of the textile
division of Delhi Cloth Mills, run by Lala Shri Ram. Then he went on to become
one of the first to venture into computers. He told Dataquest in 1988–"We
were the first to venture into computers in the 1970s by introducing the first
desktop calculator". That division was spun of to become DCM-DP. Unlike his
peers, his decision to move into the industry was not one of passion–but an
assessed business move.

CN Ram


CIO, HDFC

An electrical engineer from IIT Chennai and an alumnus of IIM-A, Ram joined
HDFC eight years ago as head of IT. Previous to HDFC, he worked with the Bank of
America for 12 years. In this fast-growing domestic and private bank in the
country, he set up and manages the entire IT backbone, including customer
services and operations.

Dr Ravindran

It took courage back then, to come back to India and dream to be an
entrepreneur. But he did just that. Born in 1942, schooled at Ottapalam in
Kerala, Dr Ravindran did his BE from Trivandram and went to Stanford, where he
met Vinay Deshpande. They returned home–very few did at the time–to set up
Processor Systems India. This is for the man who dared to dream in the wrong
place at the wrong time. And got a whole industry going...

Balu
Doraisamy

president, Hewlett-Packard India

In his earlier role, Balu was the managing director of Compaq Computer India
Ltd since June 1999. He led Compaq India to be the #1 IT vendor’s position in
the domestic market, with a leadership position in servers, storage, desktop
PCs, notebooks, workstations and mission-critical support services. That success
has seen him become president in the merged entity–the new HP–in India.

Bhaskar
Pramanik

MD, Sun Microsystems India

An alumnus of IIT Kanpur, Bhaskar’s first job was with Nelco, where he
sold calculators for Rs 50,000 before moving to Blue Star in 1982. When
Digital Equipment Corp came to India in 1987, Bhaskar joined as its first V-P
(sales and marketing). Personally, says Bhaskar, "that was the turning
point for me". In Digital, he rose to become director (enterp-rise sales)
for APAC before he left to join Sun Microsystems.

Dr Raj Reddy,

Dean (Computer Science Institute), Carnegie Mellon University

Forty two years ago, he left India with a BE in Civil Engineering from the
Guindy Engineering College, Madras. Today, he is among the most respected names
in the US in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. Dr Reddy was
founding director of the Robotics Institute from 1979 to 1991 and is now Dean of
the Computer Science institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also
co-chair of the US President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee.

Chandrababu
Naidu

Pramod Mahajan once said of Chandrababu Naidu —"he’s the man who taught
politicians that Powerpoint could mean something other than three holes in a
wall socket." Naidu is listed here for not just being a savvy politician
who got on to the tech bandwagon when the time was right; he is here for truly
believing in what technology can do for the country, for untiringly spreading
that message and acting on it at the risk of political backlash.

Dr Roddam Narasimhan

Dr Narasimhan has many firsts to his name. The two he’s remembered for
most–he was the first president of the Computer Society of India (CSI) where
he served four terms from 1965 to 1969. He was the first Chairman of Computer
Maintenance Corporation (CMC) where he helped usher in the new era of the Indian
IT industry after IBM’s exit. With a degree in Telecommunication Engineering
from Madras University in 1947, he went to the USA. for an MS in Electrical
Engineering from CalTech and a PhD in Mathematics from Indiana.

Deepak
Puri

MD, Moser Baer

He heads the country’s only storage media manufacturer and one of the top
5 optical media companies in the world. As a mechanical engineer, he started
Moser Baer in 1983 in technical collaboration with Swiss firm Moser Baer AG,
which was into time solutions. Soon after, he saw potential in storage data. The
rest is history.

Deepak B Phatak

Call Prof Deepak B Phatak the most resourceful teacher in Indian IT. He
served as the first dean of resource development at IIT Bombay. His brief was to
raise funds for the institute and he did it mighty well through his network of
students in the US. So much so, that he set up a separate school for IT and got
it funded. He is currently the head of the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information
Technology, IIT Bombay, a school complete with a business incubator and
Internet-enabled distance learning.

Dewang
Mehta

former president, Nasscom

Dewang played a key role in putting the Indian IT sector on the world map. From
CA to the chief of Nasscom, his hard lobbying tactics paid off, making Nasscom
one of the most respected industry forums in the country. He deserves credit for
the events that led to the I-T exemption for software exporters and software
reproduction legislation, and excise & sales tax exemption from a numbers of
state governments.

Dr Homi Jahangir Bhabha

Yes. this is an unusual name to find on this list. When one thinks of Dr
Bhabha, one mostly thinks of India’s early nuclear program days. But it is not
for that that Dr Bhabha finds his name on this list. Not even for the Bhabha
Electron Scattering phenomenon. Or for the setting up the Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research. He finds his name here because in 1966, he headed the
first-ever committee on informatics that would define the course of the Indian
IT industry for well over a decade. The report suggested the imperatives for an
indigenous Informatics industry for a self-reliant nuclear defense program.

Dr N
Seshagiri

He is among the few bureaucrats remembered for his contribution to
liberalizing the industry. First through the New Computer Policy of 1984, then
the Software Development and Export Policy of 1986 and finally as
member-convener of the PM’s National Task Force on Information Technology in
1998, Dr Seshagiri also helped conceive the idea and coordinated the design and
implementation of NICNET.

Dr Narinder Singh Kapany

chairman, K2 Optronics

He is the father of fiber optics, the man that Fortune magazine one of the
seven ‘Unsung Heroes’ in its ‘Businessmen of the Century’ issue. Born in
India, educated in England and working in the US for the past many decades, Dr
Kapany invented fiber optics–"the wonder material"–in 1954. That’s
the technology that is now used from endoscopy devices to high-capacity
telephone lines and has changed the medical, communication and business worlds.

Dr
Srinivasan Ramani

Enthusiasm. That’s the one word that defines the man who helped create the
first e-mail in the country. The service was developed to demonstrate India’s
capabilities in data networking. He and fellow scientists pioneered the Internet
age in India through the Ernet–a network connecting the education and research
institutions and conducted among the earliest experiments in satellite
communications.

Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande

Born in Dharwar in 1950, he went on to become what one might call a
"serial entrepreneur". He co-founded Coral Network Corporation in 1988
in the US. He went against the nay-sayers to set up Cascade Communications in a
market dominated by Cisco and sold the company to Ascend in 1996 for $3.7
billion. By that time, 72% of all Internet traffic was coursing through Cascade’s
products. A year later, anticipating the optical networking boom, he co-founded
Sycamore Networks that would help revolutionize the backbone of the public
network. His inspiration? A framed $26.95-check that was all he got from his
first entrepreneurial venture. A reminder to him, he once said, that "If
you really believe in it, you’re going to make it happen".

Sugata
Mitra

senior vice-president (R&D), NIIT

This 50-year-old physicist-turned-computer-education-expert came to the
forefront with the internationally-acclaimed ‘hole in the wall’ experiment.
The key observation of this experiment was that children constructed their
learning without external interference, something that Dr Mitra calls ‘minimally
invasive education’. If proven, it could mean a complete makeover in the way
children are taught computers. He has also designed and implemented several
novel computer applications in India.

FC
Kohli

former deputy chairman, TCS

Dr Fakir Chand Kohli, former deputy chairman of Tata Consultancy Services,
was awarded the Padma Bhushan early this year, for his contribution to the
software industry. He is often known as the ‘Father of the Indian SW industry’.
He obtained a BSc (Hons) Electrical Engineering Degree from Queen’s
University, Canada, and MS Electrical Engineering Degree from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, USA. He is instrumental in building TCS and guiding it
to its current standing.

Harish
Mehta

It was Harish Mehta who, along with Saurabh Srivastava, Prakash Ahuja and
Shashi Bhatnagar, co-founded Nasscom, and brought in Dewang Mehta–the young CA
and computer graphics enthusiast–to head the industry association. The rest is
history. One of the early IT entrepreneurs in the country, Mehta headed
Hinditron which brought in Digital, the first MNC IT firm to arrive in India,
post-IBM’s exit.

Kanwal Rekhi

Born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan in 1945, Kanwal moved with his family to India
during the partition. With a BTech from IIT Bombay and an MS from Michigan Tech
University, he was among the first new-generation Indians to land up at Silicon
Valley and make a fortune. He co-founded Excelan in 1982 and moved to Novell
when the two companies merged in 1989. He subsequently helped set up TiE–The
Indus Entrepreneurs–and has been involved with over 50 start-ups.

Jay
Pullur

founder and CEO, Pramati Technologies

Pramati was one of the first in India to launch Java-based products, and Pullur
has worked with Wipro for 10 years. Jay holds a degree in Computer Science from
IIT Kanpur. Pramati was the first in India to license J2EE and among only three
picked to exhibit Enterprise Java Bean technology at Java One in 1999. R&D
in the Java community process has helped Pramati deliver EJB 2.0 server
technology to the market early.

Kumar Malavalli

Considered one of the originators of fiber channel technology, Malavalli
chairs the ANSI Fiber Channel Switch Committee and the FC Assocation Technology
Committee, which have helped shape standards in this area. Born in Mysore, he
did his engineering from Dusseldorf and moved to Toronto. After two decades of
work in companies like ITT, Canstar and HP, and then, one summer day in 1995, a
venture capitalist called Seth Neimann met him at a shopping center, offered him
$1.4 million and Brocade Communication!

Nandan
Nilekani

He’s been the quintessential road warrior. The man who always stood one
step behind Narayana NR Murthy, ran the operations that no outsider ever got to
see, ran the business, made that sale. Last year though, was the time for
Nilekani to come out of the shadows and take over as CEO of the company. He
still remains the road warrior, though–flying from continent to continent
closing sales. His job–to keep Infy growing in one of the toughest business
environments.

KV Kamath

If one looks at KVK’s five-year record as the chief of the country’s
fastest-growing financial institution, there’s no parallel. A veteran at ICICI,
he transformed it into an agile organization, entered new segments in the
financial sector, and brought it up to global reckoning in terms of competitve-ness
and vision. And it was through technology that KVK brought about a large part of
this transformation. A strong proponent of the New Economy, Kamath pioneered the
initiative to promote a tech company, a venture fund and a string of Internet
companies.

N Vittal

chief vigilance commissioner

He took over as the secretary of the DoE in 1990 and changed the rules of
the game. The software industry will remember him for the $400-million
challenge. They will also remember him for what he once said and did–"The
Indian software export miracle happened," he said, "because something
ungovernment-like happened. The Department of Electronics started breaking rules
to create a freer environment, which dramatically changed the scenario!"
From there, he moved to DoT, where he is remembered for his privatization
attempts.

Maj Gen A
Balasubrahmanian AVSM (retd)

This AVSM winner, with 34 years in the Indian Army, will be most remembered
for being the founding secretary of the Computer Society of India. He also
served as president of CSI from 1969 to 1972. In recognition of his services, he
won the ‘Silver Core’ from the International Federation of Information
processing.

Navdeep S Sooch

co-founder of Silicon Labs

Known in the Silicon Valley as ‘Nav’ Sooch, this Amritsar-born Stanford
alumnus prominently figures in Fortune’s ‘America’s 40 Richest Under 40’
list and is the co-founder president & chief executive officer of Silicon
Labs. His personal worth is estimated at around $186 million. Before founding
Silicon Laboratories, he held various positions at Crystal Semiconductor/Cirrus
Logic and at AT&T Bell Labs.

NK
Patni

CEO, Patni Computer Systems

Naren Patni holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Management
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has over 25 years’
experience in the IT industry and has been a consultant to US Trust Co of New
York and Arthur D. Little. He is instrumental in initiating and developing the
outsourcing business model for the software industry in India.

YS Rajan

leading scientist and author

A scientist and technologist, YS Rajan is partnering with leaders in the
industry and science establishments to accelerate technological competence and
create wealth for Indian citizens. He is executive director, Technology
Information Forecasting and Assessment Council, which looks into technology and
assesses what can be made commercial with a goal toward largescale
commercialization. Recently, he took over as scientific secretary to the
principal scientific adviser. Before joining TIFAC/DST in 1988, he was with the
Indian Space Program since 1964. He recently authored a book, named Empowering
Indians. TIFAC outlined the technology vision of India till 2020. He has to his
credit the distinction of co-authoring a book with APJ Abdul Kalam, President of
India.

Pawan
Kumar

chairman and CEO, Vmoksha

One of the oldest hands in the Indian IT Industry, this IIT Kanpur alumni
joined TCS in 1974 and is credited with setting up the Software Maintenance
Group there. After spending nearly two decades with TCS, he moved out–only to
head organizations like Fujitsu-ICIM, IBM Global Services India and DSQ
Software. Subsequently, the entrepreneurial bug bit him and he launched Vmoksha.

Prem Shivdasani

managing director, ICIM

Coming back from USA is not a recent phenomena. Prem Shivdasani did that way
back in the 80s and went on to become an icon of the Indian IT industry. Apart
from being the CEO of ICIM, the largest computer Indian company in the mid-80s,
Shivdasani has to be credited to lay the foundations of the Indian IT industry.
He was the founder member for MAIT and then later on for Nasscom.

Pramod
Mahajan

Union minister for IT, telecommunications and parliamentary affairs

In Year 1999, Mahajan was given the task of heading the newly-created IT
department. He helped the Indian IT sector strengthen its roots and also helped
India maintain key alliance with Asian leaders like Goh Chok Tong, Dae-Jung and
Natsagiya Bagabandi. Along with building a resurgent regional identity, he also
pushed forward path-breaking legislation. He has networked extensively with
politicians, bureaucrats, academicians, businessmen and scientists.

Pradeep
Sindhu

CTO and founder, Juniper Networks

Legendary venture capitalist Vinod Khosla calls Sindhu "tech’s
biggest unsung hero". The Juniper founder expanded the routers’
capabilities, making Juniper the only company so far to seriously threaten Cisco
and permanently alter the Internet’s backbone technology. He founded Juniper
in 1996 and was considered crazy to take aim at Cisco. But 5 years later Juniper
grabbed 30% of the high-end router market. Prior to Juniper he was former Xerox
PARC principal scientist where he designed tools for VLSI and high-speed
interconnects for shared memory microprocessors.

Pramod
Bhasin

president, GE Capital

Arguably the most important man in the BPO space in India is Bhasin. GE has
20,000 employees working in back-end offices in India. He says the BPO industry
in India can have another 45,000 trained students enter it. Currently GE handles
450 processes across 30 different businesses. Bhasin is a CA from Thomson
McLintock & Co, London and holds a BCom degree.

Prof Sadagopan

founder-director, IIIT (Bangalore)

The founder-director of the Indian Institute of Information Technology,
Bangalore he has taught for more than two decades at IIT Kanpur and IIM
Bangalore. From 1973-1976, he moved to Purdue University, USA for his master’s
and doctoral degrees before returning to India to teach at IIT-K. Prof Sadagopan
has taught full terms at Rutgers University (New Jersey), IIT-M and AIT
(Bangkok). He has authored two textbooks–Management Information Systems and
ERP: A Managerial Perspective. His name figures among Marquis’ ‘Who’s Who
in the World’ since 1997.

Prof
HN Mahabala

One of the pioneers of Indian IT education, 66-year-old Prof HN Mahabala
obtained his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan,
Canada. In 1965, Mahabala initiated the computer science program at IIT Kanpur–a
first in India. He has taught over 25 courses in computer science and set up a
national computer center at IIT Chennai.

Prof N Balakrishnan — Balki

chairman (information scientist & services)

Indian Institute of Science

Prof N Balakrishnan has made significant contributions to the creation of
the Centre for Microprocessor Applications, the National Centre for Science
Information, the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre at the Indian
Institute of Science. He was associate chairman of the Centre for Scientific and
Industrial Consultancy Centre. He is currently chairman of the Supercomputer
Education and Research Centre and also divisional chairman of Information
Sciences & Services. He has contributed to over 120 publications and
international journals and among his areas of research is numerical
electromagnetics.

Rajesh
Uppal

general manager (IT)

Maruti Udyog Limited

Rajesh Uppal is the IT chief of the country’s largest automaker. A
mechanical engineer, Uppal joined Maruti in 1985. Since then, he has been
working in the IT division at MUL. Joining the division as an executive, he
today heads it as general manager. During his stint at MUL, Uppal has been
witness to the nascent wing growing in stature and reach to become what it is
today. Before joining Maruti Udyog, Uppal had worked with Bhel in the public
sector unit’s IT department. Today, 60% of the company’s business is
conducted online and 260 dealers are linked to their WAN.

Rajesh Jain

Rajesh Jain made it to the cover story of the February 2000 issue of TIME–"Rajesh
Jain taught Asia what Silicon Valley has known for a long time: going public may
be the most celebrated way to cash in on the Internet, but selling out can be a
sure-fire moneymaker." And he got $115 million for selling out India’s
first portal site–IndiaWorld–to Sify in November 1999. A year before that,
Jain set up NetCore, a Linux-based messaging software company. NetCore is now
transforming itself into a company called as Emergic.

Raj
Saraf

chairman & MD, Zenith Computer

Saraf is an LLB from the University of Mumbai. He singlehandedly ventured into
the arena of electronic components–pioneering Zenith Semiconductors. Without
external help–financial or otherwise–Saraf incorporated his dream, Zenith
Computers, in 1980. Zenith has come a long way from the sale of integrated
circuits to assembling and then to its own brand. Saraf has played a key role in
taking PCs to the common man, with dramatic price slashes being his strongest
weapon–one that makes him a formidable adversary in the PC space.

Rajiv Bapna

founder, Amkette

Rajiv Bapna, an alumnus of IIT Delhi, founded Amkette in 1986. The company was
the first-ever domestic manufacturer of floppy diskettes in in India. In a short
span of time, Amkette gained a strong name in the Indian market due to Bapna’s
strong focus on precision manufacturing, customer service and distribution
policies. In time, Amkette has diversified into a computer essentials company
with a range of 150 products encompassing 15 categories. Bapna is also
responsible for creating one of the largest IT distribution network in the
country.

B
Ramalinga Raju

Ramalinga Raju the soft-spoken son of an agriculturist who developed a hard nose
for the IT business. Raju jumped into IT as a hobby, quickly realized its growth
potential and has today built it into a Rs 1,700-crore giant. He started one of
the first–if not the first–true outsourcing deal with Deere & Co in the
US and set off a whole new phenomenon. In 1999 he won the Ernst & Young
Entrepreneur of Year (Services) Award.

Rajiv Gandhi

They called him the JFK of India–the man who took a different, young,
modern image of India to the world. They called him the "Laptop Prime
Minister" (he carried a 386 Toshiba). Later, they called him other names
like "Computerji". But he’s remembered here not just for the image
he projected outside, but the messages he sent within. He believed in the Indian
IT dream long before Indian programmers were flocking to training institutes and
long before Indian software even looked like it had a future internationally;
for his various technology missions and for setting up C-DAC that gave India its
first indigenous supercomputer. But most of all, he’s remembered for the New
Computer Policy, 1984, announced within 19 days of his coming to power–that
opened the floodgates.

Ramesh
D Grover

managing director, CMS

He learned very early in life how to rise over adverse situations and emerge
a winner when he managed to survive and successfully migrate to India from
Lahore in 1947 soon after the partition. After joining BITS Pilani on a
scholarship, he soon started assembling radios for co students to fund his
study. He took up his first job at L&T but quit it after eight months to
join IBM as a trainee engineer. In his decade long stint there he went on to
become its national technical support manager. His big opportunity came when IBM
decided to exit India and some worried customers suggested that he start a
maintenance company and that they would suport him. It worked!

Rajendra
S Pawar

chairman, NIIT

A distinguished alumnus of IIT Delhi, Pawar co-founded NIIT along with
batchmate Vijay Thadani and with support from Shiv Nadar. Pawar, a visionary and
developer of HR potential, has played a role in instituting quality processes
and Crosby’s CDMS at NIIT. He is interested in foreseeing the trends and
crucial directions in the deployment of IT for quantum change in organization
effectiveness.

Sanjeev Bhikchandani

The pioneer in the Web-enabled recruitment business, this 39-year-old IIM
Ahmedabad exponent founded naukri.com in 1997 before the dot-com wave hit Indian
shores. Even as several others recruitment websites entered and exited this
space, naukri.com remains one of India’s few profitable Internet businesses
and projects sales revenue for financial 2002-03 at Rs 10 crore. During his 16
years in the industry, Bhikchandani has worked with Lintas India and SmithKline
Beecham, before "being bitten by the entrepreneural bug".

S
Ramadorai

chief executive officer, Tata Consultancy Services

Beginning his career with TCS as a programmer, Ramadorai rose through the
ranks and was given the charge of setting up TCS’ operations in the US in
1975. He began with New York and that network has since grown to over 50 offices
throughout the country. Since taking over as CEO, he has focussed on building
relationships with large corporations and academic institutions, planning and
directing technology development and acquisitions and overseeing the company’s
R& activities.

Raman
Roy

president and chief executive officer, Wipro Spectramind

As president and chief executive officer of Wipro Spectramind, Raman Roy was
responsible for the company’s strategic direction and is the key driving force
of the company’s mission and business philosophy. 45-year-old Raman is
regarded as the pioneer and "guru" of the IT-enabled services business
out of India, having played a pivotal role in proving India as a locale for
remote processing and has successfully delivered servicing solutions.

Sabeer Bhatia

entrepreneur

He was India’s first IT poster boy–who made greenbacks by playing
hardball with the world’s richest man. After selling Hotmail for about $390
million in Microsoft stock, he returned to his entrepreneurial ways because he
did not want to be called ‘Mr Hotmail’ for the rest of his life. His fall
from grace came with the demise of aarzoo.com, which was a casualty of the
dot-com bust. He has floated NavinMail, which offers voice-based services that
allow users to send voice messages.

Sam
Pitroda

CEO, WorldTel

They called it the ‘Great Technology Honeymoon’–his and Rajiv Gandhi’s–that
led to the setting up of the Center for the Development of Telematics in India
and his appointment as Gandhi’s technology adviser. Against one of the most
public oppositions in the history of Indian technology by bureaucrats of all
hues, he launched the Rural Automatic Exchanges (RAX) project, that brought the
PCO revolution to India. Pitroda launched his own company, Wesom, in 1974 in
Chicago, which he sold to Rockwell International six years later. After his
return to the US, he took over as CEO of WorldTel, which helps develop and
finance telecom in developing countries.

Sanjeev
Aggarwal

CEO, Daksh

e-Services

When he decided to quit as CEO of 3Com India, he didn’t join the dot-com
gold rush. Instead, he ventured into IT-enabled services–specifically CRM–as
his experience had taught him that most online transactions are abandoned
because of inadequate customer support. And in two years’ time, he not only
built a 2,300-people-strong team, he also created a highly customer-centric firm
with a focus on delivering customer service–a fact that was recognized by
Ernst & Young, which have him the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year Award’.

Shailendra Gupta

Group CEO, Tech Pacific Holdings

In 1996, when Tech Pacific invested into Godrej & Boyce and started
Godrej Pacific Technology in India, nobody thought that the venture would become
big. But it did, thanks primarily due to Gupta, the man who headed this company
as CEO since its inception and implemented the Tech Pacific business model and
management systems in the Indian environment. In 1999, Tech Pacific bought full
equity from Godrej & Boyce and the company became Tech Pacific (India) Ltd,
a fully-owned subsidiary with Gupta as managing director. Tech Pacific is a
top-tier distributor in India and posted revenues of Rs 1,676 crore for fiscal
2001-02.

Satish
Naralkar

Satish Naralkar has spent 20 years in the IT industry with companies like IBM
and CMC, but his stint as the

CIO of NSE for five years since inception fetched him his real glory. In 1994,
his brief was to architect a new stock exchange for the country using
technology. And he delivered well, with NSE having many firsts in technology and
technology practices to its credit–the world’s largest satellite-based
trading network, business continuity planning, outsourcing, Internet-based
online trading, and much more. Since 1999, Naralkar has been heading NSE.IT, a
technology subsidiary carved out of the National Stock Exchange.

Vijay Bhatkar

chairman, ETH Research Lab

He is the father of Indian supercomputing. As the then executive director of
Center for Development of Advanced Computing, he gave India’s its first
supercomputer–PARAM 8000–in 1991 . And he did it in a record time of three
years. It was the most resoundingly proud retort to the US, which had then
refused to let Cray sell its supercomputer to India. Bhatkar went on to build
PARAM 10000 in 1998, one of the world’s largest supercomputers, propelling
India into the group of elite five nations that possess this technology. He is
also credited with nurturing the GIST multilingual technology which made
possible the use and co-existence of all Indian languages along with English on
standard computers and the setting up of C-DAC’s well-known Advanced Computing
Training School. He has authored/edited eight books and over 80 research
publications in supercomputing, artificial intelligence and distributed computer
control. In 2000, the government awarded him the Padmashri.

Shashi
Ullal

former president and MD, HECL

Ullal worked for 42 years with the Indian IT industry, and was the first to take
on the challenge of a new industry–the VSAT segment–and assumed office as
president and managing director of Hughes Escorts Communications in July 1995.
He developed this industry segment in India, one because of which his company
maintains the early entrant advantage. Previous to Hughes, Ullal was with IBM
for 19 years, and other major assignments were with DCM Data Products,
Hewlett-Packard division of Blue Star Ltd, Modi Olivetti and Alcatel Modi. As
president of the VSAT Service Providers’ Association, he also raised the VSAT
issue to facilitate access to Ku and C bands and foreign satellite connectivity.
He is a member of the Telecom Committee of Ficci, Assocham and CII.

Sirjang (Jugi) Lal Tandon

CEO & chairman, Celetron

One of the earliest immigrants from India to Silicon Valley, he founded the
Tandon Corporation in 1975, producing magnetic recording heads for floppy disk
drives and becoming a leading producer of floppy disk drives. Prior to 1975,
Jugi had worked at IBM, Memorex and Pertec. For his achievements in technology
and business, he was also awarded an honorary doctorate degree overseas.

Shiv
Nadar

25 years ago, when Shiv Nadar quit DCM to form Hindustan Computers Ltd in a
one-room tenement, little did he realize that he would pioneer the growth of IT
in India in every sphere–hardware, software and networking communications.
Also that, in the process of running HCL, he and his company would be become the
incubators for India’s leading IT professionals and entrepreneurs. Today, he
has moved on to the software side, with HCL Technologies, to make it amongst the
top 10 Indian IT companies.

Sivasankaran

Sterling Computers

Sivasankaran launched the Siva PC at an unbelievable price of Rs 29,000 and took
the bottom out of the market. That was to become a habit with Siva–he did the
same in 1997–till he eventually faded out of the PC scene altogether.

SR
Balasubramanian

chief information officer, Hero Honda

He is considered the person who turned IT cynics into IT believers within
Hero Honda. With 27 years’ experience in the field of IT, starting from Indian
Oil Corp to AF Ferguson & Company, Balasubramanian joined Hero Honda Motors
in 1990. Back then, he was involved in IT implementation, devising new IT
policies and coping with the resistance to IT implementation. After a two-year
break, he re-joined Hero Honda and helped install structured LAN systems and WAN
links, connecting 21 locations and manufacturing plants. Employees were soon
eager to be part of the network and the culture changed–and that made using
SAP much easier. As things improved, Hero Honda made increased revenues and
faster audits–thanks in part to Balasubramanian.

Suhas Patil

chairman emeritus, co-founder and director, Cirrus Logic

A true visionary, Patil co-founded Cirrus Logic with Michael Hackworth in
1984. Today, Cirrus Logic is a leading manufacturer of advanced integrated
circuits for multimedia, communications and mass storage in personal computers.
Born in Jamshedpur, Patel received his degree in electronics and electronics
communication from IIT in 1965 and went on to get his PhD in electrical
engineering from MIT. Subsequently, he taught at MIT and then moved to the
University of Utah. Later, he founded VLSI Group and Patil Systems in 1981.

Suresh
Rajpal

When HP entered India, the government had all sorts of rules, licenses and
regulations. The person who helped manage all that and give HP a headstart
toward becoming one of the largest IT companies of India was Suresh Rajpal. He
is the man who launched HP in India and took it to over $200 million in revenues
during his tenure. Also, at the height of his career in 1999, he quit to start
his own venture–e-Capital Solutions.

Team Samsung

A success story of 31 employees managing an over Rs 1,200-crore business–that’s
Team Samsung. With the highest-per-employee productivity of nearly Rs 40 crore
per employee, Team Samsung has leveraged the channel to form the largest IT
peripherals company. Other achievements include crossing the 3-million-monitors
mark by October 2002 to capture 52.5% of the Indian color monitor market. The
company has set up a manufacturing unit with a 4-million installed capacity,
even as the entire monitor demand in India is pegged at 2.5 million units
annually.

Sunil
Bharti Mittal

chairman & MD, Bharti Enterprises

From a cycle parts manufacturing business that he started in 1976 with
borrowed capital of Rs 20,000, Mittal has come a long way to head Bharti Group,
whose flagship company Bharti Tele-Ventures is India’s leading private sector
provider of telecommunications services. Under his stewardship, not only has
Touchtel become India’s first private sector telephone service provider to
cross the 300,000-mark, Bharti is also the first telecom firm to cross the
2-million mobile subscriber mark. Besides, Bharti rolled out IndiaOne–the
country’s first private international long-distance service leading to sharp
drops in STD and ISD rates. BusinessWeek named him ‘One of the Top
Entrepreneurs’ for Year 2000 and a ‘Star of Asia’ for Year 2001.

Veer Sagar

CEO, TCG Software Services (India)

He is an industry veteran in the true sense–with over 21 years’
experience in the information technology space and over 16 years at the helm of
various organizations. After starting his career at Dunlop, he moved to ICIM in
1984. Under Sagar’s "unobtrusive and friendly" style of functioning,
ICIM continued to flourish. In 1989, he left ICIM to join DCM Data Systems as
its president and CEO. Veer Sagar is remembered for successfully turning around
the ailing DCM Data Systems. It was under his leadership that the company
launched Cosmos/10, the world’s first i486-based system, and in April 1990,
the company bagged a $11-million order from the United States–then the largest
Indian software export order.

V
Rajaraman

IBM professor, Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research

He returned from the US at a time when computer education wasn’t even on
the horizon in India. As an academician, he built that horizon. He mooted and
started the first-ever under-graduate course in computer science at IIT Kanpur,
in the face of stiff resistance–which came because there weren’t even any
books available on computers at the time. So Prof Rajaraman took the easy way
out (!)–he wrote them–a good 15 of them, actually. If the origins of this
industry lie in the education we received, then he is remembered as the guru who
helped Indian computer pros grow. Prof Rajaraman has also been in the faculty of
various prestigious institutes like IIT Kanpur, IISc Bangalore, Universities of
Wisconsin, California and Berkely. He has also been a visiting IBM Research
Fellow at the Systems Development Institute, Canberra. In 1997, Dataquest gave
him ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ for contribution to IT. He landed the Padma
Bhushan in 1998.

Vinod Khosla

general partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Forbes calls him "One of the Movers and Shakers of the Tech
World". An influential VC of Silicon Valley today, 47-year-old Vinod Khosla
is best known for co-founding Sun Microsystems, the largest corporation founded
by an Indian. He also set up Daisy Systems, which was one of the first companies
to go after the computer-aided design software market. An IIT Delhi and Stanford
Graduate School of Busines alumni, he is on the boards of Asera, Corio Inc,
Juniper Networks, Redback, QWEST Communications and Zaplet Inc.

Vyomesh
Joshi

executive V-P (imaging and printing group) Hewlett-Packard

VJ, as he is known, has worldwide responsibility for all printing, scanning and
digital camera platforms and for ensuring the leverage from investments in
inkjet, laser and LEP printing technologies. He also leads HP’s digital
imaging strategy and is responsible for key initiatives to transform the
commercial printing market through digital publishing. He became the
vice-president and general manager of the former inkjet imaging solutions
personal imaging and printing organization in 1999 and had responsibility for
all inkjet printing and imaging platforms. He also led the HP initiative on
digital imaging appliances, infrastructure and services.

Vinod Dham

CEO, Silicon Spice

Known to the world as the ‘Father of the Pentium’, Dham left Indian
shores on an engineering scholarship at the University of Cincinnati, with the
proverbial $10 in his pocket. After working with NCR–a chip design company in
the US–he joined Intel to lead the Pentium team. Subsequently, he went on to
set up Silicon Spice to develop VoIP solutions for the communications market.
His latest venture is NewPath Ventures, a tech company incubator that proposes
to set up five hybrid Indo-US companies that will focus on chip-making, embedded
software and system design.

Vivek
Paul

president, Wipro Technologies

Drive. That’s the word that comes to mind when one thinks of Vivek Paul.
He’s not old, but the swathe he’s cut in his professional life might well
fool you into thinking he is. After a BE from BITS Pilani, Paul left for the US
for an MBA from Amherst. After a few jobs, he landed up at GE–where he would
spend the next 10 years of his life. In 1989, he was a member of the first GE
evaluation team that came and started GE’s outsourcing relationship with
India. Later, he helped identify, launch and for a while headed the Wipro-GE
Medical Sytems JV. In 1996, he returned to GE to run its global computerized
tomography business–which became a case study in global sourcing. In the three
years since he’s taken over as president of Wipro Technologies, he’s grown
the business by 45% and operating profits by 50% almost every year, plus given
the company international branding like never before.