Ramadorai of TCS is Dataquest IT Man of the Year

Tata Consultancy Services CEO, Subramaniam Ramadorai, fondly known as Ram was
conferred the Dataquest 'IT Man of the Year' for 2004 at a glittering
ceremony in New Delhi. The annual Dataquest awards night recognizes corporate
and individual achievements and is a sought after event that brings together the
who's who of the Indian IT industry.

The highlights of the evening included a keynote address by Sri Sri Ravi
Shankar of the Art of Living Foundation, and the Dataquest Top 20 corporate
awards and the individual achievement awards.

While the year 2004 Pathbreaker Award was conferred to the Indian Railway
Catering and Tourism Corp (IRCTC), this year's Lifetime achievement award was
conferred to N Vittal for his role in driving key policies in the IT and telecom
space. They enabled both the consolidation of India's telecom revolution, and
the consequent flourishing of IT in the country. For IRCTC, the recognition came
for its effort in revolutionizing the railway ticketing business in the country
and scripting an e-commerce success story in the process.

"Ram took the reins over from the legendary and formidable Dr FC Kohli,
the grandsire of the Indian technology industry. And built and maintained a
leadership position of TCS and of the Indian IT industry at large. He has
rallied over 20,000 employees around the vision of being among the global top 10
consulting companies by 2010," the special Dataquest panel that announced
the awards, said after its meeting in New Delhi. 2004 also belonged to Ramadorai
for another achievement-he was responsible for the largest IPO in Indian
history. The IPO which hit the market in August 2004 was oversubscribed by over
seven times and the size of the offer amounted to Rs 5420 crore and made TCS one
of the largest company in India in terms of market capital.

The special Dataquest panel comprised of Deepak Puri- Chairman and MD of
Moser Baer, (the chairman of the panel), Intel India's President-Ketan
Sampat, Kiran Karnik-Nasscom President, Zenith CMD-Raj Saraf, CEO of NIIT-Vijay
Thadani, PNB Head of IT-KS Bajwa, Cyber Media MD- Pradeep Gupta and Cyber
Publications' Editor-in-Chief- Shyam Malhotra.

Announcing the unanimous choice of ex-CVC and ex-DoE Secretary, N Vittal for
the Lifetime Achievement award, the panel noted: "As Secretary of the DoE
from 1990 to 1993, Vittal pushed through a series of initiatives that set the
tone for the IT industry in India for the decade ahead: software technology
parks, the electronics hardware technology parks scheme, and other policies that
had a direct bearing on FDI in the 1990s."

On IRCTC as the Pathbreaker Award-winner for 2004, the panel said,
"Apart from building a successful eCommerce model, the company has made
Internet usage a reality in cities ranging from Anand to Benaras to Guntur and
Shimla to Shillong."

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