Zensar COO Kekre drowned

PUNE: IT industry veteran and Zensar Chief Operating Officer (COO), 53-year old Anil Kekre passed away on September 26, 2004 in an accident. Anil was holidaying with his family in Murud in Maharashtra's Raigad district and was washed away by the strong current while swimming in the river. He is survived by his father Shambhunath, wife Jyoti and daughters Shireen Borkar and Geeta Kekre.

A Stanford Business School alumnus, Kekre had been associated with the industry for the last three decades. He had Master's degree in electronics and computers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and a Business Management degree from New Delhi-based FMS.

Having spent three decades in the IT industry, Anil joined Zensar Technologies in January 2004. Prior to joining Zensar, he was the Managing Director—Europe and Executive Vice President at Satyam. Anil has contributed to the IT industry in a variety of roles spanning Hi-tech R&D to strategic management and lead highly qualified, multi-ethnic teams across the globe. He had led the R&D design of "OO" case tool and ERP suit "MAMIS" at Mastek and the marketing team that achieved a spectacular turnaround. He had earlier worked with companies like Tata-IBM and HCL-HP sister concern.

At DCM Data Products, Anil was the Chief Architect of the Galaxy-21 mini computer and led the team that designed the Galaxy-21 mini computer and MULTOS-the multi-user operating system, as well as the Spectrum series of microcomputers.

He was cremated on Monday.