Ajay Sawhney, Ashank Desai, Falguni Nayar and Sridhar Vembu win at 29th Dataquest ICT Awards

Dataquest has announced the prestigious list of its annual ICT award winners in its 29th Edition. Ajay Sawhney, former Secretary, MeiTY, won the IT Person of Year.

The Lifetime Achievement Award went to Ashank Desai, Co-founder, Nasscom, and Principal Founder and former Chairman, Mastek Ltd. The Pathbreaker of the Year Award was won by Falguni Nayar, CEO and Founder, Nykaa. Sridhar Vembu, Founder and CEO, Zoho Corp. was declared the AatmaNirbhar Bharat Champion.

The awards will be presented at the #DQConclave2022 on Wednesday, 8 June 2022, at the event titled “Transform with NeXtGen Tech” from 9.30am to 6.00pm. This will feature exciting keynotes, exhaustive panel discussions and fireside chats featuring the Who’s Who of the IT industry. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the Chief Guest in the 2014 edition. Past winners include NR Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Nandan Nilekani, Chandrababu Naidu, Pramod Mahajan etc.

Ajay Sawhney has had an important role in the Digital India and data initiatives along with Make in India which helped India boost its electronics manufacturing hub for the largest mobile and consumer electronics companies of the world.

Ashank Desai has a career spanning more than 40 years in the Indian IT industry; he was the co-founder of Mastek (Management and Software Technologies), one of India’s oldest software companies in 1982. 

Ms. Falguni Nayar’s Nykaa listed at $13 billion valuation on 10 November 2021. Soon after Nykaa went public, Nayar became the wealthiest female Indian billionaire, with her net worth rising to the tune of $6.5 billion. 

Sridhar Vembu’s Zoho has more than 60 million users worldwide and Zoho One is its flagship product with over 45 apps. Vembu runs the in-house Zoho University, which provides training to students who have completed 12th grade and funds a school for rural children in southern Tamil Nadu.

Som Mittal, Former, President & Chairman, NASSCOM chaired the jury which deliberated and picked the award winners. Sunil Vachani, Chairman, Dixon Technologies was Jury Co-Chair. Som Mittal , Jury Chair, was the winner of last year's Lifetime Achievement Award (2020)and Sunil Vachani, Co-Chair was AatmaNirbhar Bharat Champion Winner last year (2020).  

Other members of the jury were Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, Arun Seth, Former Chairman, BT, Dulles Krishnan, MD, Enterprise, Coursera, Rajesh Nambiar, President, Digital Business & Technology, Cognizant, Rajesh Garg, EVP and CDO, Yotta Infrastructure Solutions, Prof. S. Sadagopan, former Director, IIIT Bangalore, Sanjib Sahoo, EVP and Chief Digital Officer, Ingram Micro Inc. Pradeep Gupta, Chairman, CyberMedia Group was in the Jury Co-Chair.