Tamal Chakravorty Joins Bata As Global Director-IT

After an eight year long association with Ericsson India, veteran CIO Tamal Chakravorty has moved to Bata Shoe Organization (Bata) as their Global IT Director. This move marks a significant shift from telecom to consumer retail segment.

As the CIO of Ericsson India, Chakravorty handled IT operations/strategy in the South Asia region (mainly India and Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives) for the telecom major. At Bata he will be responsible for strategising, envisioning and setting the long term IT initiatives for Bata globally, with India as a proof of concept. “My focus will be to deliver world class IT strategy at the lowest price possible,” says Chakravorty.

Commenting on the drastic shift from telecom to consumer retail vertical, he states, “I will have to understand the cultural shift first. Telecom was a more technology focused company and more attuned to changes in technology, while Bata is more of a retail company with people focused on sales and distribution processes.”

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Over the years Chakravorty has honed skills like people management, expectation management and change management, which will be key to succeed in this new role. “It is more about managing the company’s expectation than pushing in technology. It is all about the business success that IT can enable, which means a lot of interactions worldwide with many nationalities, understanding them, their pain points and be able to deliver promises within short period of time to gain global trust,” he explains.

Chakravorty has almost two decades of experience in the technical aspect of IT as well as management spanning across multiple industries, including FMCG, oil, trading, PC, etc. Choosing to work for different kinds of industries and gaining perspective on how IT functions throughout has been his professional goal. Chakrovorty started with the IT industry in the early 90s with Zenith Computers, going on to make progress working with companies like Caltex Oil India, Cargill India, PepsiCo and as Group CIO for Anand Group before moving on to the telecom giant Ericsson.

His educational qualification in management from XLRI and AIMA apart from the technical qualifications of CISA, CCNA and MCSE backed by his vast IT experience facilitates his adoption of IT functions across the span of verticals.