The Fifth Elephant

Panel Moderator

Sandeep Phanasgaonkar

former CIO Reliance Capital,
Global CIO Genpact.
currently advisor to
VCs & high tech startups

Sandeep is a strategic consultant for enterprises, using agile IT frameworks to drive growth and profitability. He is also participating as a mentor, advisor to high tech start-ups, working in tandem with PEs and VCs. I am guiding the startups in product management, "go to market strategy", financial capital for growth funding and the ability to leverage the larger enterprise and mass market in India as well as opportunities overseas.

Sandeep was President & Chief Technology Officer for Reliance Capital (RCap)Ltd. RCap is a diversified financial services company with presence in Mutual Funds, General Insurance, Life Insurance, Online Trading & Broking and Commercial Finance. In 6 years from biz startup, he has created a diverse enterprise platform that has enabled accelerated growth for the group. Sandeep's has driven transformational projects in RCap in Virtualization, Mobility, Cloud Computing & Business Intelligence. This is both pan-RCap & line-of-business specific.

Sandeep has extensive experience in applying IT solutions to finance, banking, BPO and ITES. He began his career with the State Bank of India (India's largest commercial bank) as Project Manager in the Task Force for branch automation. He then worked for Tata Unisys as consultant for banking technology for offshore development centers and product development. He later worked with Oracle Financial Software (earlier iFlex & a world leader in banking ERP systems) as senior consultant for pre-sales and implementation of banking systems. Sandeep became Regional Technology Head of Deutsche Bank for Asia and saw the bank through its crucial Y2K phase and key implementation of cash management systems. Sandeep then joined GE Capital, India as its Group CIO and transitioned to Genpact, where he took over as its Global Chief Information Officer. Genpact is India's largest BPO with over 30,000 employees and operations in 8 countries. In Genpact, Sandeep led the critical IT Migration of Genpact from GE and was responsible for global IT deployment and delivery for all BPO & ITES operations.

Sandeep's aim is to create differentiation and drive quick business fulfillment at connect points with customer & partners.

Panel Member

Ramesh Nagarajan

CIO for the Global IT Services
of Wipro Technologies

Ramesh Nagarajan (Ramesh) is the Chief Information Officer for Global IT Services Business of Wipro, and is responsible for enterprise wide Information Systems strategy, application development, framing surrounding policies and practices, and enabling the same thru right hardware and network infrastructure. In his role, he is also responsible Information Security and Risk Management for the enterprise.

Ramesh started his clear as a Systems Engineer in Wipro’s the Information Technology division, subsequently moved on to engineering division of Wipro GE Medical Systems, a joint venture of Wipro and GE. He served as an expat in GE Medical Systems, USA and Japan for over a decade developing systems software for medical devices and program managing software development for large medical devices. He returned to the Global IT Services Business of Wipro in Oct, 2000.

Ramesh, prior to his current role was leading customer delivery, operations and competency building, as Chief Operating Office for the Financial Solutions business unit. He has earlier held various leadership roles in Wipro, notably – Global Head of Insurance Vertical, Program Director for a large Systems Integration Programs, and lead the team that conceptualized and implemented ‘Lean’ tenets in software lifecycle development.

Ramesh is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where he completed his Masters in Computer Science and Automation and secured the Senate Gold Medal. He also holds an Engineering degree in Electrical & Electronics.

Panel Member

Sriram Krishnan

Executive Vice President &
Head-IT of ING Life Insurance

Sriram is an Insurance and IT professional with 20 years of working experience in the insurance markets of Asia-Pacific, Japan, UK and US. With a diverse exposure to complex working environments and cultures, he appreciate the diversity at customer organisations.

Sriram is currently the Executive Vice President and Head - IT of ING Life Insurance, India. He is accountable for strengthening the partnership with the Business and applying technology to propel business growth. Sriram was earlier with Wipro Technologies and headed the Business Advisory Services for Insurance. Here he was charged with creating new ground for Wipro Technologies in the insurance markets across Asia-Pacific. He was responsible for delivering the strategy of the Insurance Vertical at Wipro by demonstrating business thought leadership. His initial stint was with LIC as an Adminstrative Officer where he managed the IT department and branch operations of one of the largest branch of LIC in India. He was also a member of the strategic team that developed the policy administration application rolled out to over 2000 branches today.

Sriram believes that organisations benefit only if IT and business functions collaborate on delivering change. He has worked on large business change programs at various client organisations including ING, Aviva plc, Prudential plc, Friends Provident plc, LIC of India, Allianz, HDFC Standard Life over the last 20 years.

Sriram has done the Advanced Management Program from IIM Bangalore and has a post graduate diploma in Computer Applications from the National Institute of Industrial Engineering.

Panel Member

Raghavendra Vaidya

CIO for GE India
Technology Center

Raghavendra Vaidya has over 15 years of IT industry experience. He has held a number of positions during these years like Program Manager for large enterprise IT programs, Enterprise Architect, Application Technology leader and CIO.

Raghavendra has been with GE for 12 years. He started with Global Research as Program manager and did a stint in the USA as Enterprise Architect for Energy Services. He was the application technology leader for Energy Infrastructure managing a global team. He did 3 years stint with GE Capital as CIO, Quality and Sourcing leader from 2008 to 2011. He was regional CIO for Energy from Jan 2011 to Sept 2012. Raghavendra is currently the CIO for GE India Technology Centre.

Raghavendra feels that given the spread of GE businesses; there is a contuing evolution that is happening in each business and GE evaluates the need for new hardware and software every year. GE has IT infrastructure requirements that need to help then perform very focused transactions.