And the Award Goes to

Saurabh Srivastava of Xansa and Pradeep Gupta of CyberMediaThe two faces of Knowledge and Entrepreneurship

Hollywood has Oscars, Bollywood has Filmfare, and the music world has

Grammies the Indian IT industry has the Dataquest Awards for the last fifteen

years and 2007 was no exception. The most coveted awards of Indian tech

incidentally coincided with the silver jubilee of Dataquestall the more reason

for celebration as the entire whos who of the Indian IT industry descended down

on the function organized in Delhi.

Ajai K Chowdhry of HCL Infosystems receiving the Dataquest IT Person of the Year Award from Nandan Nilekani of Infosys

HCL Infosystems CEO and chairman Ajai Chowdhry was conferred the Dataquest

IT Person of the Year Award for 2007 at the glittering ceremony. The annual

Dataquest Awards recognizes corporate and individual achievements and is the

most sought after event that brings together the big names of the Indian IT

industry.

Mohandas Pai of Infosys receiving the Dataquest IT Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of NR Narayana Murthy from Pradeep Gupta of CyberMedia

The highlights of the evening included a keynote address by Sir Terence

Matthews, an innovative skit on entrepreneurship, knowledge dissemination

between Saurabh Srivastava and Pradeep Gupta and the Dataquest Top 20 Corporate

Awards and the Individual Achievement Awards.

VS Shivarudraiah, Project Officer for Bhoomi receiving the Dataquest Path Breaker Award from Shyam Malhotra of CyberMedia

Chowdhry was honored for passionately focusing on the Indian domestic market

and believing in the potential of computer hardware manufacturing in India. He

had also pioneered in creating the home-user market for computers and was also

the first to recognize the user-side of convergence.

NS Bindra of Ingram Micro receiving the Top Distributor Award from Revathi Kasturi, Former MD of Novell West Asia

While the Pathbreaker Award was conferred to the Bhoomi project of the

Karnataka government, this years Lifetime Achievement Award was conferred to

NR Narayana Murthy for successfully building a global company from India that

not only made India the epicenter of all software action, but completely changed

the rules of global IT services.

Sir Terence Matthews, Chairman of Wesley Clover delivering the keynote address

For Bhoomi, an initiative by the Karnataka government for digitizing land

records across the state, the recognition came for touching the lives and

empowering 6.7 mn farmers and other landowners across the southern state.

Corporate Awards



HP bagged the Top PC Vendor Award as it shipped 744,686 PCs in 2006. HP

was also the unchallenged leader in the printing and imaging segment, with

greater market share than all other companies put together.

Ingram Micro bagged the Top Distributor Award with revenues of over Rs

6,800 crore. This was Ingram Micros first financial year after its merger with

Tech Pacific when it added new lines of business. NIIT was honored as the Top

IT Training Company as it offers education across the globe and posted net

revenues of Rs 795 crore last fiscal.

In the networking segment, Cisco maintained its monopoly as the Top

Networking Vendor, with 81% router market share and 73% of the switches market.

IBM India, too, maintained its position as the Top Server Company in India

with a market share of 34% across the x86 and non-x86 range.

With acquisitions, large deals and new markets, TCS posted a growth of 33% in

revenues to cross Rs 18,000 crore, and registering an impressive 87% growth. TCS,

thus, emerged as Indias biggest software exporter. The company also bagged the

Best Employer Award for 2007 and, thus, becoming a great place to work, as per

the Dataquest-IDC survey.

VK Malhotra of TCS receiving the Best IT Employer Award from Sanjiv Bikhchandani of Naukri.com	Navin Joshua and Sohit Brahmawar of vCustomer receiving the Best BPO Employer Award from Alok Bhardwaj of Canon India

 

Dr BK Mathur of IIT Kharagpur receiving the Top TSchool Award from Alok Bhardwaj of Canon India

In the IT and ITeS sector, vCustomer was ranked #1 and bagged the Best BPO

Employer Award, and IIT-Kharagpur was adjudged as numero uno, becoming Indias

top technology institute that provides future leaders to Indian and global IT

industry. Dataquest-IDC survey found that IIT-Karaghpur had posted a significant

improvement in infrastructure and industry interface.

The winners were chosen by an eminent panel of experts comprising Nandan M

Nilekani, co-chairman of Infosys; Alok Ohrie, CEO and MD of AMD; Dr Ganesh

Natarajan, deputy chairman and MD of Zensar Technologies; Dr Jai Menon, director

(IT and Innovation), Bharti Airtel; Revathi Kasturi, the then MD of Novell West

Asia; Rahul Bhasin, senior partner, Barings Private Equity Partners; and Sanjeev

Bikhchandani, CEO of Naukri.com. Pradeep Gupta, chairman of CyberMedia and Shyam

Malhotra, editor-in-chief of CyberMedia, were also part of the selection panel.

Vijay K Thadani of NIIT receiving the Top Training Company Award from Ganesh Natarajan of Zensar	Sameer Mathur of HP receiving the Top PC Vendor Award from Alok Ohrie of AMD

 

VK Malhotra of TCS receiving the Top IT Company and Top Software Exporter Award from Rahul Bhasin of Barings Private Equity Partners International	Shashi Mal of IBM India receiving the Top Server Company Award from Alok Ohrie of AMD

 

Ranajoy Punja of Cisco India receiving the Top Networking Vendor Award from Dr Jai Menon of Bharti Airtel	V Krishnan of HP receiving the Top Printing and Imaging Company Award from Dr Jai Menon of Bharti Airtel

 

The IT Person of the Year addressing the audience

 

Nandan Nilekani strikes a candid pose	Ajai Chowdhry and Shiv Nadar interact with the guests

 

The award ceremony kept the audience engrossed