Dell announced the winners of the second edition of the industry’s only democratized awards selection — ‘India’s best CIOs.

Dell announced the winners of the second edition of the industry’s only democratized awards selection — ‘India’s best CIOs.’ Vijay Sethi, CIO, Hero MotoCorp Ltd and T.G. Dhandapani, CIO, TVS Motors were awarded the first two places respectively in the community-driven CIO Award Series. Ajit Manocha, CIO, Syngene International Ltd (Biocon) and Suneel Aradhye, Group CIO, RPG Group were jointly awarded the third place. This year also saw a new category ‘India’s most eminent CIO’ which was conferred to Dr. J.S. Sodhi, CIO, Amity Group. The selections were based on online voting by the Indian CIO community that had commenced on February 10.

The Grand Finale of the second edition of the awards took place last Thursday at the Hyatt Regency, Mumbai in an august gathering of the top 50 CIOs of the country, selected based on peer-to-peer nominations. This year saw a 50 % increase in participation with 449 CIOs polling 1334 votes for their peers across industries in India. The theme of the event was ‘Winning through Transformative Leadership’’ and the awards were presented by Sourav Ganguly, ex-Captain of the Indian Cricket team. The other keynote speaker at the event was Arvind Gupta, National Head, Information and Technology of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Vijay Sethi, VP & CIO at Hero MotoCorp Ltd. who was awarded the title ‘India’s Best CIO’ for the second year in a row said: “Being awarded the Best CIO for the second consecutive edition is a very humbling experience. Continuous IT innovation to ensure that IT investments deliver high value consistently to the business especially in today’s times of a very demanding business landscape is the key differentiating factor of a successful IT team. My colleagues at Hero and my family have played a key role in helping me achieving this title once again and my sincerest thanks to all of them. I am also grateful to the CIO Association of India and Dell for this initiative.”

Gaurav Chand, Vice President, Marketing, Commercial, Dell Inc who was also present at the event said: “These are exciting times for CIOs. The dynamic nature of technology has brought with it greater possibilities for efficiency, productivity and opportunities for innovation than ever before. It is certainly an honor for me to interact with Indian CIOs who are leading impactful innovation and we at Dell will do everything to enable and empower them to excel in their business.”

R. Sudharsan, Commercial Marketing Head, Dell India, said: “Business today is in the midst of a transformation; it is increasingly focused on co-creation and collaboration with technology underpinning a CIO’s efforts. CIOs are no longer technology buyers but business enablers. At Dell, we strive to enable CIOs to be Future Ready and the India’s Best CIOs awards initiative as the industry’s only democratized awards for the CIO community is the ultimate culmination of this focus. In a profession best understood by the community, it is heartening to see the recognition of the country’s best CIOs by CIOs and we congratulate the winners for their contributions to their respective businesses and the industry.”

Tapan ‘Ananta’ Garg, Founder & CEO, CAIsaid: “Often the work of the CIO goes unnoticed in the larger scheme of things, bucketed in to the category of ‘taken for granted’ in an Organisation. Our vision for the Best CIO awards was to felicitate deserving CIOs and encourage them to take their respective organisations through the next leap of growth. The participation from the community has been overwhelming and reflective of the support that exists in the community.”
The winners are some of the country’s brightest minds and were selected based on a two-step awards selection process: a peer based nomination via online voting and a jury-based assessment and validation by renowned CIOs and technology evangelists.