CIO Masters 2012: Honouring India's Leading Business Technology Leaders

“Vision without execution is hallucination,” said Thomas A. Edison…And execution without vision is misdirected. And, a combination of the two is what makes great leaders. Celebrating this pioneering spirit of vision and the mettle of execution, the first edition of Biztech2.com CIO Masters reached its grand finale – CIO Grandmasters 2012 on March 13, 2012 that recognised and awarded India’s most prominent masters of business technology.

CIO Masters 2012 programme was kicked off in November 2011 with the aim of not only recognising and acknowledging the business technology leaders among the Indian CIO community but also engaging with them to bring forth and share their experience-driven business technology insights with other enterprises and CIOs.

These CIOs are leading and shaping business-technology alignment in some of India’s leading private and public sector enterprises in the four key technology domains of ‘Collaboration’, ‘Security’, ‘Virtualisation’ and ‘Datacentres’. They broke the barriers and successfully overcame their business challenges by mastering these technology domains. A full list of Biztech2.com CIO Masters is available at www.biztech2.com/ciomasters .

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CIO Grandmasters, the culmination of months of this engagement programme, aimed at recognising the leader among the leading CIOs in each of these domains as well as honour CIOs who truly exemplify business leadership and have risen beyond technology leadership.

The CIO Grandmasters 2012 award for ‘Collaboration’ was won by Vijay Sethi, VP-IS & CIO, Hero Motocorp and Umesh Jain, President & CIO, YES Bank. Sandeep Phanasgaonkar, President & CTO Reliance Capital was named CIO Grandmaster 2012 for ‘Security’. Alpna Doshi, Reliance ADAG Group CIO was awarded CIO Grandmaster 2012 for ‘Virtualisation’. V. Subramaniam, Director-IT & CIO (India & Gulf Area), Otis India, won the award for ‘Datacentres’.

Vijay Sethi, VP-IS & CIO, Hero Motocorp

Umesh Jain, President & CIO, YES Bank

_Alpna Doshi, Reliance ADAG Group CIO_

Sandeep Phanasgaonkar, President & CTO Reliance Capital

V. Subramaniam, Director-IT & CIO (India & Gulf Area), Otis India

If there is one common thread that runs across these CIOs, it is leading technology not only as a technology leader but as an innovator, manager, implementer, and business catalyst.

Rajesh Uppal, Executive Officer (IT) & CIO, Maruti Suzuki and Arun Gupta, Group CTO, Shoppers Stop, were honoured with ‘CIO Of The Year 2012’ award for providing stellar technology leadership and now growing beyond the CIO role into managing various lines of business and being an inspiration to other CIOs. While the air is still rife with discussions and debates around CIO transition to a business role, these two have not only made that transition successfully but are also moved out of the shadow of the CIO role to be recognised as business leaders.

Rajesh Uppal, Executive Officer (IT) & CIO, Maruti Suzuki

Arun Gupta, Group CTO, Shoppers Stop

With Business Technology leadership for CIOs being the flavour of the day, the panel discussion around CIO Priorities for FY 2012-2013 amply highlighted the challenges and the roadmap to drive down that lane. With panelists including Umesh Jain of YES Bank and Manish Bahl, Director & Country Manager—India with Forrester Research, Rajesh Uppal of Maruti, and Arun Gupta of Shoppers Stop, the discussion was moderated by Ivor Soans, Managing Editor – Enterprise Technology, Network 18.

The big question on everyone’s mind was: ‘Can the CIO become CEO’? The consensus was that the CIO’s readiness to don the CEO role was a function of the individual’s capability and possession of the required skillsets of a CEO rather than the acceptance of CIO as CEO.

It was highlighted that for CIOs who have walked the tightrope in their career and know how to balance, and know how to manage people and relationships, there should not be any debate about whether they will make good CEOs or not. In fact, the panel highlighted the fact that today the CMO, CFO, CIO and HR Head all stand an equal chance of graduating to the CEO position, and it is now a question of being the first among equals and how do you demonstrate that visibly that you get acknowledged.

The panelists also envisaged the CIO role becoming more fluid and dynamic with the CIO sometimes playing the role of an enabler, becoming a support for business in some cases, and sometimes leading the business from front.

Delving upon what makes for a truly Business Technology CIO, Manish Bahl spoke on ‘The Empowered BT CIO? A Road Map To Succeed In An Empowered World’ in his keynote session for the evening.

Speaking on the CIO Masters programme, Ivor Soans, Managing Editor-Enterprise Technology, Network18 said, “The unique aspect of CIO Masters 2012 was that it was CIO-driven. I’m grateful to our CIO Masters for enthusiastically sharing their business technology wisdom and insights during the course of this programme by writing blogs, opening up their businesses to powerful Biztech2.com video case studies, speaking to other CIOs through our video interviews, moderating CIO-driven round tables and more. With technology at the heart of business today, CIOs are no longer business enablers, but business leaders and CIO Masters underlined this fact.”

Lakshmi Narasimhan, CEO, Web18 further added, “CIO masters is a showcase that features technology leaders who have led and shaped technology and business alignment in some of India’s most prominent organisations. But rather than just recognise these giants, CIO Masters features insights from their rich technology leadership experience, knowledge distilled from years of facing business challenges successfully, and roadmaps for the future.”

Forrester Research was Knowledge Partner for the event, while CIO Masters Technology Partners included Avaya, RSA and Brocade.