Former telecom secy to head Nasscom

R Chandrashekhar's appointment reflects shifting focus of the industry body

Nasscom, the apex industry body that represents the IT industry in India is going to have former telecom secretary R Chandrasekhar as its president. The industry body on Friday said that Chandrashekhar will succeed the incumbent Som Mittal when the latter’s term ends on 3 January 2014.

Chandrashekhar’s selection to the top position of the over $100 billion industry assumes significance in many ways.

Firstly, he will become the first retired bureaucrat — especially someone who has worked for both the IT and telecom departments in different terms — to head an industry body. Secondly, this also gives a sense about the shifting focus of the industry body at a time when global boundaries were slowly becoming impermeable due tight immigration policies of different bodies.

“Today, the biggest challenge facing the industry is to improve government relations everywhere – because of immigration and related issues in most of the countries in Americas, Europe. This requires a deep engagement with the different governments including India in terms of policy,” said Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of Zensar Technologies.

“So I think given the state of the industry and Nasscom’s priority for the next two years, Chandrasekhar is absolutely a good choice,” added Natarajan, who is also a former chairman of Nasscom.

Agrees Kiran Karnik, a former president of Nasscom. “I do believe that the challenges that the sector is facing today has reached a magnitude, and are much different than what those used to be few years ago. The appointment (of Chandrashekhar) also in a way highlights the shift of focus within the industry and you need a person who is well-versed in dealing with government and is well aware of its working.”

Ever since its inception in 1988, Nasscom has so far seen three presidents including the founder-president Dewang Mehta who died at the age of 39 in 2001. He was succeeded by Kiran Karnik.

According to sources in Nasscom, the decision to select Chandrasekhar was taken by a succession committee which was headed by S Ramadorai, former CEO of Tata Consultancy Services who is now adviser to the Prime Minister in the National Council on Skill Development.

“Though his background does help in understanding and dealing with the government agencies, it does not in any way mean a shift in the focus of Nasscom.

He is well equipped to face the challenges that the industry is facing and we are confident that he is the right candidate to take care of the industry body after Som Mittal and Kiran Karnik,” said Keshav Murugesh, group CEO WNS and chairman Nasscom BPM Council.

Nasscom said Chandrashekhar’s joining date will be determined following the necessary approvals from the Govt. of India.

Nasscom which initially was focused on the IT services industry is also going through a restructuring because of the emergence of newer areas of opportunities, may it be in product engineering services, software product, analytics or business process management.

“Chandrashekhar is a well-regarded and competent former bureaucrat. We are quite hopeful that he would steer Nasscom in the new phase of journey with focus on all the segments of the IT industry which will make the organization stronger,” said Sharad Sharma, former head of Yahoo! India R&D.

Earlier this year, Sharma along with few other industry professionals formed Indian Software Product Industry Round Table (iSpirit), a think tank meant for creating policy framework for the product industry.