In a career span of less than two decades, Ashish Chauhan, group CIO,
Reliance Industries, has done it all. Born and brought up in Ahmedabad,
Chauhans parents, who are government officials, instilled values like honesty
and perfectionism in him. After his intermediate from Ahmedabads reputed
Gujarati medium school Diwan Ballubhai Madhyamik, he did his BTech in mechanical
engineering from IIT Bombay in 1989, and followed it up with a post-graduate
diploma in management from IIM Calcutta in 1991.
A Good Beginning
Chauhan began his innings with the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI)
in the project finance department, where he was responsible for financing and
postfinancing follow up of power and electronic goods related projects.
Chauhan considers himself fortunate enough to have been selected with four
others to be a part of the team to set up the NSE after the Harshad Mehta scam.
His first brush with technology was at the NSE, where he was involved in
setting up Indias first commercial satellite telecom network and also the
screen-based trading system for equity trading, clearing, risk management,
listing, and writing regulations. In addition to this he was overlooking
interior decoration, legal aspects, negotiations, imports of equipment, getting
telecom licenses, project management, purchase and lease of premises.
Ashish Chauhan, Group CIO Reliance Industries |
After the project started, Chauhan was designated as the head of business and
operations for the equities market in NSE, which became the largest exchange in
India within eleven months of its operations and over a period, the third
largest exchange in the world by the number of trade.
And, by the end of 1995, Chauhan was given additional responsibility to set
up the first exchange traded financial derivatives market. This included
conceptualizing, marketing, changing legal framework, and writing regulations.
Chauhan terms his seven-year tenure at NSE as an enriching experience, where,
in spite of being the youngest member in the team, he was entrusted with
responsibilities which made him grow as a professional. While working at NSE, I
also set up several path breaking initiatives such as the Initial Public
Offering (IPO) through screen-based book building, NSEs Certification in
Financial Markets (NCFM) for equities, derivatives, depository, mutual fund,
real time risk management, Online real time surveillance in securities markets,
and creating NSE-50 (Nifty) and several other stock indices, setting up of the
index management company, trading of Nifty at Simex (Singapore Monetary
Exchange), and real time risk management using parallel processing for millions
of investors, he adds.
Managing a Behemoth
In his current role as the group CIO of Reliance, Chauhan has his hands
full.
He is all praise for his current employer, where the work culture is
entrepreneurial and result oriented, with a lot of decision making delegated to
the person working in the field or on a project. And, this gives each employee
a control over his environment as the decision making rests with him, unlike in
other organizations. But, at the same time, the coherence and control over
standards, processes, and integration is not lost. This is one of the reasons
why we are able to do world scale projects in a lesser time span and at lower
costs, he says.
The group has a CIO for each business who is called a business CIO and there
is a team of highly skilled professionals who support these business CIOs.
Currently, in a corporate role, my work profile is to facilitate each business
CIO in achieving highly effective IT implementation and operations for their
respective areas, he elaborates.
Most businesses today are highly automated, requiring tremendous capabilities
to automate and operate these complex operations under extreme conditions.
Reliance on IT
Reliance is one of the few companies where an annual operating plan for
providing an overall direction and planning the work for the year is prepared in
granular details by each BIO, which is combined at the corporate level, and
presented to the management for approval. During the course of the year, this
plan is updated based on changing business priorities over the year and progress
monitored through monthly reviews.
Half-yearly BIO meets are held to improve communication with the large IT
team consisting of more than 2,000 highly qualified engineers. Periodic top
management reviews provide the essential vision, direction, and guidance to the
IT team. A separate corporate team (Program Management Office) works with the IT
leadership to review, coordinate and guide all the running IT projects, SLAs,
timely completion, rollout, and effectiveness of IT. The PMO team also helps in
monitoring progress of various teams, organizing for training, skill management,
planning and budgeting of IT initiatives.
Even though the IT team in Reliance is highly motivated, maintaining this
motivation is an area where the management spends considerable time and efforts.
Periodic skill enhancement opportunity, vertical and horizontal movement
opportunities, compulsory rotation, appraisals linked to performance, leadership
skills demonstrated during the period and setting up of pre-set specific goals
are some of the generic steps taken by the company to ensure fairness and
efficiency in the organization.
Balancing the Tightrope
Being an MD radiologist meant that my wife too had a bright future ahead of
her, but she decided to go slow on her career to help me work long hours and
strive to reach my own potential, he says. Also, the medical condition of their
son and no other social support system in Mumbai meant that one of them had to
go easy on their career.
Chauhan is all praises for her ability to manage her personal requirements as
well as manage the requirements of their only child. Despite me not being there
at home, even at critical moments nor being able to attend social events on most
occasions, she has shouldered all responsibilities without any complaints
whatsoever, he says proudly. In addition, being a medico has meant that she
advises Chauhan to take care of personal health, that has been extremely
important in retrospect.
In short, she has been a true support. Doing the balancing act between work
and family, and at the same time, being a motivating factor in his life.
Chauhan does not believe in forecasting, and, therefore, resists from making
any plans for the future. His idea of the next 10 years and beyond is to grab as
many varied opportunities as life has to offer and add value to his work.
Stuti Das
stutid@cybermedia.co.in