Nandan Nilekani is IT person of the year

NEW DELHI: Infosys CEO and Managing Director Nandan Manohar Nilekani won the coveted `IT person of the year 2006’ award by Dataquest Magazine. The Dataquest Awards for 2006, which took place in the Capital on Thursday recognized Nilekani’s contribution to the IT industry.

Nilekani, who is deeply involved in pushing the cause of the Indian IT industry is also the co-founder of NASSCOM and the Bangalore chapter of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE). He is also the member of the National Knowledge Commission and part of the National Advisory Group on e-Governance.

The Dataquest IT Lifetime Achievement award was conferred posthumously, to Late Arun Kumar, former Chairman of NASSCOM and former CEO of Flextronics Software Systems.

Prasanto Kumar Roy, President and Chief Editor, CyberMedia Publications said that Kumar played a pivotal role to help open up an avenue of collaboration with the Pakistan IT industry. “He was closely involved in fostering entrepreneurship from TiE, to the band of angels, with strong motivational skills. In 1999, he drove through his software company’s initial public offering (IPO). It was the first successful IPO based on the book-building, price discovery process,” Roy said.

The Pathbreaker of the year 2006 award was conferred to the MCA-21 Project of the Ministry of Company Affairs. Driven by the MCA, this mission project under ht e-Government of India’s National e-Governance plan is a landmark project on a very large scale of information technology in the shortest possible time frame. Y.S. Malik, Joint Secretary MCA, received the award.

Also presented on the occasion were the "Dataquest Top 20" corporate awards. The Best Employer award was conferred to Tata Consultancy Services, Top Growth Company award went to Red Hat India, Innovation award conferred to Microsoft India, Top IT company and Top Software Exporter award given to Tata Consultancy Services, IBM India was adjudged as the Top Server Company, Cisco Systems became the Top Networking Vendor, Top Printing and Imaging vendor award went to HP, NIIT got the Top Training company award, Microsoft India became Top Package Software vendor, Top Distribution award went to Ingram Micro and HCL Infosystem became the Top PC Vendor.

Dataquest Awards are based on the DQ Top20 survey; India's most respected awards of the IT Industry, these awards are given to the leading company in the major IT segments. Dataquest Achievement Awards are a celebration of excellence in IT, the DQ IT person of the Year, The Lifetime Achievement and the Path Breaker awards are an acknowledgement of the exemplary contribution of the evangelists and super- achievers of the Indian IT industry. The DQ Top 20 is the India's most authoritative and respected survey of the IT industry and market, often referred to as the "Bible of the Indian IT industry.

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