Karnataka Rajyotsava award: IT's moment of pride

BANGALORE: The Karnataka government has selected 90 persons, including Mohandas Pai - HRD chief of Infosys and Ananth Koppar - chairman and CEO of KTwo Technology for this year's Karnataka Rajyotsava Award.

Space scientists Dr S K Shivakumar and M Annadorai, who played a major role in Chandrayan, and Prof P Balaram, (IISC, Bangalore) were also selected for the prestigious award, which are given in 24 categories including various fields of art, culture, science and social service.

The winners were selected from a list of 2,500 applications, said Karnataka Home Minister V.S. Acharya, while talking to the media here on Thursday.

T. V. Mohandas Pai, who joined Infosys in 1994, has served the organization in various capacities.

A member of the board and director since May 2000, he has served as the chief financial officer from 1994 to 2006, when he decided to remit the office of the CFO to lead efforts in the areas of Human Resources and Education & Research activities of Infosys.

He was voted ‘CFO of the Year’ in 2001 by IMA India and American Express. He won the ‘Best CFO in India’ award from Finance Asia in 2002, and ‘Best Chief Financial Officer in India’ in the AsiaMoney Best Managed Companies Poll 2004.

Pai is a graduate in commerce from St. Joseph’s College of Commerce, Bangalore and a law graduate from Bangalore University. He is also a Fellow Chartered Accountant (FCA).

Anant Koppar, the chairman and CEO of K2 Technology, hails from Gadag, North Karnataka, and he is one of the success stories and a role model for people coming from rural middle class backgrounds for corporate success.

A Masters in Computer Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, this visionary technology leader began his career in Wipro. Later he joined an engineering college as a lecturer.

However, he knew technology was his forte and left the academic job to become part of the team that set up Tata Elxsi and BFL Software, now known as MphasiS BFL Limited.

In 1997, Anant Koppar founded Kshema Technologies and grew it to a large niche technology services provider in six years. Kshema merged with MphasiS in 2004.

While declaring this year’s award, Acharya said that from this year onwards the government has decided to raise the cash prize for the award from the existing Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 1 lakh.

The awardees will also get a gold medal weighing 20 gm each apart from a memento, a citation and a shawl.

The awards will be presented at a function to be held at Sri Kanteerava Indoor Stadium in Bangalore on November 1, the Kannada Rajyotsava Day.