CAII Annual Dinner & Awards 2022

Sanjiv Mehta

CEO & MD, Hindustan Unilever Ltd

Sanjiv Mehta is the CEO and Managing Director of Hindustan Unilever Limited which is India’s largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Company. As President, Unilever South Asia, he is also responsible for Unilever’s businesses in South Asia having a combined turnover of over $8 billion. He is a member of Unilever’s Global Executive Board (Unilever Leadership Executive) which runs the global consumer goods giant. Sanjiv is also the President Commissioner (Non-Executive Chairman) of the Board of Commissioners for Unilever Indonesia.

Sanjiv has done his Bachelor’s in Commerce, Chartered Accountancy and has also completed his Advanced Management Program (Harvard Business School). He has been with Unilever for 29 years and for the last 20 years he has led businesses in different parts of the world as the Chairman / CEO. He has been Chairman and Managing Director of Unilever Bangladesh Limited (2002-06), Chairman and CEO of Unilever Philippines Inc. (2007-08), Chairman of Unilever - North Africa and Middle East (2008-13) and from October 2013 he assumed his responsibilities of heading Unilever’s business in India and South Asia.

Harish Mehta

Founder & Executive Chairman, Onward Technologies

Mr. Harish Mehta is the author of the national bestseller ‘The Maverick Effect’ and the driving force behind galvanizing the IT industry in India by co-founding NASSCOM, the IT industry’s association. He was elected as the first Chairman of NASSCOM and continues to be the Convener of NASSCOM’s Chairman’s Council.

Harish Mehta has a long history of success as an Indian entrepreneur, investor, and changemaker. Mr. Mehta has founded, led, grown & mentored the Onward Group. From 1993 to 2005 he served as the Deputy Chairman and MD of Onward Novell Software India Private Limited, a JV with the world's 2nd largest personal software company at the time. Prior to founding Onward, he was one of the chief architects of the Hinditron–Digital (DEC) JV in India in 1987.

He introduced Silicon Valley’s, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) to India and is the co-founder of the Indian Angel Network (IAN), one of the world's largest and most active angel investor groups. Harish Mehta is also a founding member of Infinity Venture Fund, India’s first corporate VC fund, and an active volunteer of Onward Foundation & Dewang Mehta Foundation.

Radhika Gupta

MD & CEO, Edelweiss Mutual Fund

From being a self-doubting girl to becoming one of the youngest CEOs in the financial services industry at 33, livewire Radhika Gupta’s climb up the corporate ladder has been steep. Since the time she took charge, Edelweiss MF's AUM have grown from Rs 6,000 cr in 2017 to over Rs 91,000 cr in just five years. Investing in long-term debt was brought to the forefront by her, when she launched Bharat Bond ETF three years ago, fourth tranche of which was launched recently. The Edelweiss MF Bharat Bond AUM has crossed Rs 50,000 cr mark already. Her motivation has been the multiple job rejections early on, which only cemented her determination to make it to the top. She was finally hired by McKinsey in 2005 and has not looked back ever since. She has penned down her experiences overcoming adversity and attaining success in ‘Limitless’, published recently.

Kersi Tavadia

CIO, BSE Ltd

Kersi Tavadia, CIO at BSE Ltd., has over 40 years of vast industry experience in IT - Software Development, Infrastructure Services (Networks, Operating Systems and Databases) and Cyber Security for organizations operating in Financial Services and Capital Markets.

In his twelve-year stint at BSE, Kersi has played a leading role to transform BSE into world’s fastest exchange with response times of 6 microseconds. He is strong proponent of Open-Source Technologies and has demonstrated “Walk the Talk” by successfully implementing one of the Largest Data Warehouse on Open Source Platform. Taking this to next level, he is instrumental in use of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning in BSE’s surveillance function by implementing Social Media Analytics for rumour verification.

Providing technical leadership & architectural vision is core to his heart. Under his leadership at BSE Limited, many such mission critical projects/ applications have been implemented and some of the noteworthy implementations are successfully designed and built multiple datacenters for the exchanges and have automated complete disaster recovery procedures as well as the day-to-day business systems operations.

Lovneesh Chanana

VP & Head, Government Affairs (APAC) - SAP Asia

Dr. Lovneesh Chanana leads the public policy, government programs and thought leadership engagements for SAP in Asia Pacific and Japan. A known thought leader in policy and program level application of technology, Dr. Lovneesh has been contributing to development of technology policy landscape and leading many transformative government programs and projects. Working closely with industry bodies, where he leads and drives the digital economy agenda, Dr. Lovneesh has been contributing to knowledge sharing around technology developments and policies around cloud, SMEs, sustainability, workforce skilling, entrepreneurship and innovation. He has been instrumental in structuring and forging Government-industry partnerships to create a conducive digital ecosystem in many Asian countries including India. He has also been contributing to capacity building of Government officials and has designed and developed training programs on various areas related to technology programs in Government. He works passionately with academia and has been contributing to ensure industry readiness of youth and students through curriculum design and delivery.

Dr. Chanana holds a Ph.D. in Information Systems Management with a research focus on Mobile Governance.

Anish Shah

President, COO, Jio Platforms Ltd, Chief of IT & Digital Platforms, Reliance Jio

An accomplished technology leader with over 25 years of experience, Anish Shah is dialing in 5G, helping Jio to leapfrog to nextgen. His focus has been on developing and building global-scale digital platforms, digital strategy and infrastructure services for India’s largest telecom company, that has over 425 million subscribers. In this mutual growth journey, he has partnered with technology startups and Fortune 100 companies. He is counting on AR, VR and Web3 technologies to enable new revenue streams and believes that telecom companies should become technology companies.

Sanjivan Shirke

SVP - (IT), Head - IS - UTI Asset Management Company

Shri Sanjivan S Shirke, is working as Senior Vice President (information Technology) and Head of Information Security in UTI Asset Management Company. Sanjivan Shirke has more than 30 years’ experience in Information Technology and Cyber Security Practices. Established Respectful position in the fraternity of CIOs, CTOs and CISO of various Industries within India. He has hands on experience as developer, Database Administrator, System Administrator, E-mail Administrator and Cyber Security Practices.

He has done his Master’s degree in Finance from University of Mumbai with Post Graduate Certification in Computer Programming and Applications from CMC, GoI Enterprise. He also has International Diploma in Programming and Application (affl.) to National Computing Centre, United Kingdom. He completed Certified Ethical Hacker course with certification from EC-Council, USA and practices to protect critical Information Infrastructure and Information. He also done various certifications like ISO 27001 (2013) and ITIL (Foundation).

Jaspreet Singh

Partner - Advisory Services - Grant Thornton

Jaspreet Singh is an action-oriented leader focusing on Cyber, Technology and Enterprise risks. He is best known for his contributions to global cyber security concerns, having helped more than 20 organisations respond to ransomware attacks in addition to several state governments in the recent past. He has managed large and complex transformation programmes across financial services, telecom, e-commerce, fintech and infrastructure sectors. He also runs the Virtual CISO office for many stakeholders and is a trusted advisor on digital and cyber security strategic initiatives.

Manoranjan Kumar

CIO, Shree Cement

He is known to be an innovative CIO who has exemplified over 26 years of his managing IT in large corporates, including implementing IoT and Robotic Process Automation based tools for business process automation. Manoranjan Kumar has a proven track record of reducing IT operational costs and completing timeline-based large IT projects within budget and meeting management expectations. He has successfully managed collaborations helping to bridge internal and external customers and has laid out short and long-term IT and information security strategy and a roadmap.

Arvind Sivaramakrishnan

CIO, Apollo Hospitals

Arvind Sivaramakrishnan is the CIO of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd, India and is based out Chennai, India. He is responsible for the IT strategy and implementation across the Apollo Hospitals group. Arvind has extensive experience in management consulting, architecting, and building solutions for enterprise-wide applications. He leads the digital transformation initiatives at the Apollo Hospitals Groups.

He has led Apollo Hospitals in achieving the prestigious HIMSS Level 6 Health care IT maturity model certification which is a rare maturity level attained in Asia Pacific Arvind has lead the Apollo team to be recognized with the HiMSS- Elsevier award (2013, 2014, 2016, 2018) for outstanding use of IT in patient care delivery in Asia Pacific . Arvind has led Apollo Hospitals to achive the CHiME Most Wired Digital Hospital stage 8 certification in years 2019 and 2020.

Rajeev Batra

Chief Information Officer, Bennett Coleman

Rajeev is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and member of the EC (Executive Committee) at Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd. (BCCL) - the largest publishing company in India and South-Asia. BCCL and its subsidiaries (called The Times Group), are present in every existing media platform -- newspapers, magazines, books, TV, radio, internet, event management, outdoor display, music, movies and more and includes The Times of India - largest English publication in the world. With more than 30 years of industry experience, Rajeev is responsible for driving the strategic and tactical adaptation of Information Technology at the Times Group.

Prior to joining BCCL, Rajeev was with MTS India, a JV of Sistema JSFC, Russia and Shyam Telecom, as Chief Information Officer and Member of Management Committee. He is also on Advisory Board of Sistema JSFC investment, Sistema Asia Fund in India.

Ajay Kumar

Former Defence Secretary, Government of India

With ‘Make in India’ at his heart, Ajay Kumar has pushed both the electronics and the defence manufacturing industry in India to emerge as a leading player on the global map. During his time, the defence exports scaled up to Rs 13,000 cr for 2021-22. Undoubtedly, the credit for this goes squarely to his vision of introduction of modern warfare capabilities, disruptive technologies and innovations. He established the iDEX initiative to spur a cost-effective defence start-up ecosystem, clearing Rs 498 cr proposal, fostering innovation and technology development in support of 300 start-up and 20 partner incubators. Earlier at the Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) under Electronics Manufacturing Cluster scheme, as a first he approved 500 acre cluster in Andhra Pradesh set up a cost of Rs 340 cr. Other initiatives included, Preferential Market Access Policy and creation of Electronics Development Fund. It is due to his efforts that electronic system design and manufacturing in India under ‘Make in India’ became a reality and has witnessed steady flow of investments.

Narendra Nath Veluri

CEO, Agency for New and Renewable Energy Research and Technology (ANERT)

As an Indian Forest Service officer, Narendra Nath Veluri has worked in forest divisions known for human-animal conflict. He brought human deaths to zero during his tenure at Palakkad through out-of-the-box methods adopted that reduced crop damage by elephants to half of that of 2017 damages. He engaged with PVTGs, sensitised them and did solar electrification of all houses. He has implemented Green Income Scheme for 1,000 BPL families by installing a 2kW solar power plant free of cost. A 300 km of solar fencing in Waynad, which was a non-starter for three years, was taken up by Veluri in mission mode and completed in a record time. The Kerala Forest Department has trained the community which owns the project. Under his leadership, all the 600 government buildings in Trivendrum will be solarised by 2023.

Madhuri Sharma

Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre

In her over 30 years of service, Madhuri Sharma has steered several national projects in Women & Child Development, Socio-Economic and Caste Census and Rural Development, amongst others. She conceptualised, designed and developed technology as NREGASoft, AwaasSoft and Fertiliser Management System. Another intervention, e-HRMS has enabled the creation of e-Service book of central government employees, making day-to-day processing of various records possible, resulting in real-time updation and uniform implementation of service record rules. The development of generic IT solutions with citizen-centricity has been her forte. More recently, she mentored and guided the National Rural Stack by the Ministry of Rural Development using digital technologies catalysing rural development programmes.

Rakesh Ranjan

Senior Consultant, NITI Aayog

He is the coordinator of the Aspirational Districts programme, which aims to rapidly transform identified under-developed and hard pockets of India. This is in an attempt to improve the development indicators in such districts and support the transition towards data-based governance. He earlier headed NITI Aayog’s housing and urban affairs division and finalised the strategy for efficient urbanisation in the 12th Plan. He also helped large urban transport projects like Metro Rail in optimal restructuring and financing. Earlier, he created a suitable regulatory framework for attracting private investment under PPP in the infrastructure sector, including highways and energy.

Divesh Sehara

Secretary, SC and ST Welfare, Bihar

Divesh Sehara has a legacy of leaving his footprints behind. In 2010, he led Bihar to become the first state in the country to successfully use Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984 to curb overloading of transport vehicles. As IG Registration, he was instrumental in notifying The Bihar Stamp (Prevention of Under Valuation of Instruments) Amendment Rules, 2013, which significantly enhanced state revenues. If Bihar is proud of the successful dedication and initiation of many infrastructure and road projects, it is due to Divesh’s leadership in implementing Rs 54,000 cr Prime Minister’s Package for Bihar in 2015. The SC & ST Welfare department has benefitted from his vision of reducing pendency for compensation payments to victims. From 8,000 earlier, due to his sustained efforts, it has reduced to double digit in less than a year. Cases are monitored on a daily dashboard and payments are made directly to the beneficiary account.

Poonam Malakondaiah

Special Chief Secretary, Andhra Pradesh

It is rare to come across an IAS officer firmly rooted in spiritualism. Yes, it does raise many a brow to see a tough, committed, diligently-working-towards-goal kind of government officer. Poonam Malakondaiah is a remarkable officer who has carved a niche for herself through her outstanding work in women's empowerment. She headed a seven-member committee to advise on measures taken for the safety and security of women in the state, which also led to the formation of SHE Teams. She is an ardent advocate of women's literacy for empowerment. She covered more than 10 million farmers under YSR Rythu Bharosa in Phases 1 and 2 with a combined disbursal of over Rs 5,700 cr. Quality inputs were being supplied to farmers through the Rythu Bharosa Kendras and the entire crop insurance premium burden was borne by the government, ensuring hand-holding of farmers from the stage of providing seed to market interventions. She has also encouraged fish culture technologies in large water bodies in the state and set up a Fisheries University.

Praveen Pardeshi

Member - Administration, Capacity Building Commission

With over 38 years of administrative experience, he has held various senior leadership positions with the UN as the chief of the transition recovery unit and senior coordinator of UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. As Commissioner BMC, Praveen Pardeshi managed Mumbai's entire public health structure. He created and led the task force for COVID-19 containment while also implementing WHO and government guidelines. He was pivotal in conceptualising and steering critical reforms, improving the ease-of-doing-business. He set up the CMO, which overlooked key infra projects worth $22 billion. He was behind the transformation of public transport system – BEST – expanding its fleet through a franchise model, rationalising fares and implementing ITMS. He has currently undertaken the task of training serving bureaucrats, performance evaluation of training academies and delivering competency-based programmes, providing hands-on experience working with the corporates.