The CIO&Leader Samman was launched in 2019 to mark the 20th anniversary of the annual CIO&Leader Conference to acknowledge the contribution of senior IT leaders in Indian enterprises.
CIO&Leader has never been involved in giving any awards to CIOs, even though its sister publication, IT NEXT, confers the prestigious NEXT100 awards. That is because while that serves a community objective of finding future CIOs of India, giving awards to CIOs, in our humble opinion, is not exactly something we think we are qualified to do.
CIO&Leader Samman is not an award at all. It is a way of paying respect to the veteran CIOs. To choose a few from among a set of deserving people is anything but easy. We decided to turn to the CIOs themselves to do the selection. To avoid conflict of interest, we turned to erstwhile CIOs, as serving Indian CIOs are eligible for the Samman.
METHODOLOGY
For getting the names initially, we decided to follow the peer nomination route and asked the CIOs to nominate a maximum of three CIOs each for the honor. CIO&Leader spelled out the minimum criteria.
To be considered for the Samman, the CIOs needed to meet the following basic criteria:
- He/she needed to have had a minimum of 30 years of professional experience.
- Out of those years, at least five should have been as a CIO. This year, the jury recommended bringing down that period to two years in the case of a PSU CIO, provided the person has been in an IT role before taking up the highest position, as it is rare that a CIO serves for more than five years in a PSU.
- He/she needed to be serving as a CIO in India now. Those who have retired or are serving in a non-CIO role or are based outside India were not considered.
The jury took into account the CIOs’ professional achievements, the use of IT to maximize strategic values for businesses that they have been associated with, their leadership, and their contribution to and participation in the community cause. After two meetings and exhaustive research put forward by jury members, they came out with eight recommended names.
The 5th CIO&Leader Samman Recipients
The 4th CIO&Leader Samman Recipients
The 3rd CIO&Leader Samman Recipients
The 2nd CIO&Leader Samman Recipients
The 1st CIO&Leader Samman Recipients
