Tata Consultancy Services CEO, Subramaniam Ramadorai, fondly known as Ram was conferred the Dataquest ‘IT Man of the Year’ for 2004 at a glittering ceremony in New Delhi. The annual Dataquest awards night recognizes corporate and individual achievements and is a sought after event that brings together the who's who of the Indian IT industry.

The highlights of the evening included a keynote address by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of the Art of Living Foundation, and the Dataquest Top 20 corporate awards and the individual achievement awards.

While the year 2004 Pathbreaker Award was conferred to the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp (IRCTC), this year’s Lifetime achievement award was conferred to N Vittal for his role in driving key policies in the IT and telecom space. They enabled both the consolidation of India’s telecom revolution, and the consequent flourishing of IT in the country. For IRCTC, the recognition came for its effort in revolutionizing the railway ticketing business in the country and scripting an e-commerce success story in the process.

“Ram took the reins over from the legendary and formidable Dr FC Kohli, the grandsire of the Indian technology industry. And built and maintained a leadership position of TCS and of the Indian IT industry at large. He has rallied over 20,000 employees around the vision of being among the global top 10 consulting companies by 2010,” the special Dataquest panel that announced the awards, said after its meeting in New Delhi. 2004 also belonged to Ramadorai for another achievement—he was responsible for the largest IPO in Indian history. The IPO which hit the market in August 2004 was oversubscribed by over seven times and the size of the offer amounted to Rs 5420 crore and made TCS one of the largest company in India in terms of market capital.

The special Dataquest panel comprised of Deepak Puri- Chairman and MD of Moser Baer, (the chairman of the panel), Intel India's President- Ketan Sampat, Kiran Karnik- Nasscom President, Zenith Head- Raj Saraf, CEO of NIIT- Vijay Thadani, PNB Head of IT- KS Bajwa, Cyber Media MD- Pradeep Gupta and Cyber Publications’ Editor-in-Chief- Shyam Malhotra.

Announcing the unanimous choice of ex-CVC and ex-DoE Secretary, N Vittal for the Lifetime Achievement award, the panel noted: “As Secretary of the DoE from 1990 to 1993, Vittal pushed through a series of initiatives that set the tone for the IT industry in India for the decade ahead: software technology parks, the electronics hardware technology parks scheme, and other policies that had a direct bearing on FDI in the 1990s.”

On IRCTC Ltd as the Pathbreaker Award-winner for 2004, the panel said, “Apart from building a successful eCommerce model, the company has made Internet usage a reality in cities ranging from Anand to Benaras to Guntur and Shimla to Shillong.”

CYBERMEDIA NEWS
NEW DELHI

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