BS People: Avinash Vashistha

Risk taker

Avinash Vashistha has been a bit restless of late. In 2000, he left Nortel after being with the company for eight years — he helped Nortel set up its biggest offshore centres, in India — to found neoIT, an offshore advisory firm. In 2006, he left neoIT to sibling Atul to set up Tholons, a global strategic advisory firm. Just when he appeared settled, it was announced last week that the 49-year-old outsourcing guru had accepted an offer from Accenture to head its India operations.

For Vashistha, this is a huge step. Accenture has lagged most of its global competitors in the country in terms of deal wins. The over $15-billion dollar domestic Indian IT market is dominated by IBM, HP and Indian giants like Wipro and TCS. India contributes a very small part to Accenture’s global revenues of $21 billion.

How successful Vashistha is in bolstering the fortunes of Accenture India will depend largely on his leadership. Vashistha holds an engineering degree from IIT- Kanpur, a master’s in computer science from the University of Alberta and an MBA from Arizona. He co-authored the book ‘The Offshore Nation’.