C N Ram Quits As HDFC Bank CIO

C N Ram, one of India’s most respected CIOs is on his way out of HDFC Bank. Ram is currently serving his last few months (Up to June 2008) as Head-IT, HDFC Bank. He will serve till end of March and then head for a long vacation from April to June end. Thanks to Ram, HDFC Bank is considered a leader in the use of technology in banking. About his next move, he said that he is heading home for some time to make way for the new generation, and has no concrete plans lined up yet.

According to Ram, he will evaluate his next role over a period of next three months. As he has been involved with IT for the last 25 years he is looking at new, challenging roles. The obvious choice that comes to mind is a CEO role or becoming an entrepreneur, but Ram would give out no clues. But given his vast, highly successful and respected career in IT there would obviously be no dearth of opportunities for him.

From his hometown Neyveli in Tamil Nadu, to IIT, then a management degree from IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA), and eventually to head the HDFC Bank IT team for over a decade, Ram has had a prolific career.

Despite his one-and-a-half-year experience at Tata Steel and an engineering degree, Ram chose to work with a bank after IIMA. He joined Bank of America (BOA) as an IT employee with a mission to automate all the four BOA branches in India.

He joined HDFC Bank as the Head-IT in 1994. He has been responsible for strategic IT planning, alignment of IT with business and new implementations that may assist the bank’s business in the future. One of the highlights of his tenure at HDFC Bank was his technology leadership during the HDFC Bank-Times Bank merger, which ensured merger was an extremely successful one with no inconvenience caused to customers.

He has been in the news recently as he was to steer the technology aspects of the recent HDFC Bank and CBOP merger.