Dataquest Lifetime Achievement Award 2022: Harish Mehta, ICT Industry Doyen & Ex-Chairman NASSCOM

A 20-year man says goodbye to a plum job as a database manager in the USA and decides to come back to India. It was a time when there was no IT industry – at least, not the powerhouse we see now.

Taking brave and slow steps in a landscape, he took important strides that paved the road for the entire industry in some way.

He has played a pivotal role in building and shining India’s IT sector’s brand image on the global map. His vision and courage have been complemented well by values like Anekantwaad, comfort with disagreement and a plurality of truths, as well as the habit of espousing models like co-opetition. All this is truly unique in a world where competition and myopia on self-growth dominate a lot of decisions and lives.

That’s perhaps why it was really bold and visionary of him to shape something as novel as NASSSCOM—it was a step to create a unified voice in India’s nascent and fragmented industry. Mehta is fondly known as the founding member and the first elected chairman of NASSCOM, a not-for-profit representing India’s promising IT industry. This apex body of India’s IT-BPM companies became a voice that spoke in one tone to the policy-makers—despite being an association of competing companies, led by headstrong and ambitious people. Mehta played a big role in creating this unlikely alliance that ultimately revolutionized the Indian IT industry. It was a big catalyst in steering the Indian IT-BPM sector into a solid vantage point and a million-dollar sector in global business. No wonder, he was recognized by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for 25 years of exemplary contribution to NASSCOM in 2017.

He has also etched a big mark on the business landscape as the founder and executive chairperson of Onward Technologies Ltd. This company specialized in digital transformation much before it joined hands with the American giant—Novell as an Indian partner, did. His negotiation of a 50-50 JV, – was an unprecedented feat for any Indian IT enterprise – giving birth to Onward Novell. He later established the first significant software-based R&D center in India, for Novell.

Onward Technologies grew well as a global engineering and analytics services organization – making its mark amongst the largest 2000 global companies in North America & Europe.

He is also admired as a prominent angel investor, mentoring young entrepreneurs and startups. He ushered in The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a Silicon Valley-based organization, into India in 1999. As its First President in Mumbai and as a member of the TiE Global Board, he has played a seminal role in guiding an active community of entrepreneurs through the various chapters in India and many other countries.

He was also the founding member of the Indian Angel Network in Mumbai, one of the largest angel networks in the world—bolstering investments in early-stage ventures with the potential of scaling exponentially and wealth-creation leading to the generation of a huge number of jobs. He is also the founding member of Infinity Venture fund, India’s first corporate VC fund in 2002; Expert advisor at SIDBI for its fund of funds and a director with GVFL.

That’s not all. Mehta has made many deep contributions to many other growth paths of the country. Remarkably enough, he has helped in initiatives like the Mumbai Police for Cyber Safety Awareness—which led to the establishment of Cyber Labs across the country and the formation of the Data Security Council of India (DSCI).

As the Managing Trustee of TPATI (Trust to Promote Advanced Technologies in India), he has also led the advent of exciting new technologies in India like Very Large Data Bases, Visual Computing, AI etc. and he still contributes to emerging deep tech in India.

In his latest flourish, he has chronicled a lot of these stories and people. His book ‘The Maverick Effect’ is his passionate attempt to tell the story of how the Indian IT industry was born and how it was shaped into a global star amidst all the turbulence and struggles. His book brilliantly captures the maverick mindset that can shape industries, nations, and lives.

Dataquest is proud to present this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award to this inspiring doyen and maverick.