AI and data consulting firm 66degrees has appointed Pankaj Chugh as President and Chief Operating Officer. In this role, Chugh will oversee the company’s sales, marketing, alliances, and solutions. 

Chugh most recently served as an Executive Vice President at LTIMindtree where he ran the Retail & Consumer business, scaled some of the largest clients in Tech industry, set up delivery centers in India and US, ran the global Digital Product & Platform Engineering business, and incubated and rapidly expanded the Google Cloud business. Prior to this, at Infosys he ran and grew different industry portfolios across Europe and Americas, and led growth strategy and M&A for Infosys’ Europe and global Hi-Tech and Manufacturing verticals. 

“Pankaj’s expertise in building technology services businesses, scaling global teams, and serving as a key client advisor will serve as a great complement to our talented team, allowing us to continue to scale and better serve our existing accounts,” said Ben Kessler, CEO.” With his arrival at 66degrees, Pankaj immediately adds to three of our 2024 strategic pillars: setting client success as our north star, bringing solutions and accelerators to market, and building our global delivery team.”

Pankaj Chugh said, “Every industry is rapidly becoming a digital-first industry. Cloud, AI and data have created renewed urgency to embrace the disruption. Clients have already been asking 66degrees to help navigate the change, and this is a great opportunity to support them leapfrog. I am very excited to be a part of one of the brightest technology and business minds in the services industry.”

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Senior tech leader Chitranjan Kesari has joined N R Agarwal Industries, a leading manufacturer of finished paper products, as the Head of Information technology & Information Security. He joins the firm from Idemeum where he served as Head of Information Technology. Chitranjan comes with over two decades of diverse experience in both technology and business leadership roles. 

In his career as a technology leader, he has been associated with companies like Hive Carbon Zero Developers, Kanakia Group, Lodha Group, Omkar Realtors & Developers, Jindal and Advanced Enzyme Technologies among others. In 2019, he moved up to become the CEO of Netlynx Technologies. 

Established in 1993, the Mumbai-based N R Agarwal Industries produces high-quality paper products for both domestic and international markets. The company has its manufacturing facilities located in Vapi and Sarigam, Gujarat and has its presence over 20 countries. 

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Veteran technology leader Dr. Avadhut Parab has joined Waaree Energies as CIO, according to various media reports. 

Founded in 1989, Waaree Energies is a global provider of solar PV modules and solar energy solutions. It has presence over 20 countries and offers a diverse range of solar solutions, including EPC services, solar products & utilities, energy storage, and more. 

Avadhut was previously the CIO of Parle Agro, the Indian beverages brand, for a little over two years before joining Waaree. Prior to that, he had a 17-year-old stint at Wockhardt, serving various leadership roles before becoming the Global CIO of pharmaceutical and biotechnology giant. He has also worked for brands like Atos and Unichem Laboratories. 

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Digital engineering services company Collabera Digital announced the appointment of Kaushik Sarkar as the President of the company. In this role, Kaushik will oversee all aspects of Collabera Digital’s markets, practices, and delivery, including strategy, marketing, alliances and M&A globally.

With a career spanning close to three decades, Kaushik has undertaken various management roles across the globe in large multinational companies such as Cognizant, TCS and IBM. Prior to joining Collabera Digital, Kaushik held the position of Group Vice President at Global Logic (a Hitachi company), overseeing all operations for the EMEA and APAC regions.

“I am delighted to welcome Kaushik as the President of Collabera Digital. Kaushik has a reputation for leading high-performing teams globally, showcasing a track record of successfully navigating intricate markets and demonstrated ability to scale and transform businesses. We wish him all the success as he propels Collabera Digital forward in its pursuit of excellence,” said Hiten Patel, Chairman of Collabera Group.

Commenting on his appointment, Kaushik Sarkarsaid, “We are on an exciting journey of progression with our clients in an ever-changing environment of technology driven innovation and disruption. I am excited and privileged to be a part of a company that is deeply committed to driving value with velocity for its customers, employees, partners, and stakeholders.” 

With a global presence spanning 11 countries throughout APAC and EMEA, Collabera is present in 25 locations and cater to over 300 clients including counting Fortune 500 companies. 

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Snowflake announced the appointment of Vijayant Rai as the new Managing Director, responsible for driving the business growth and Go-To-Market strategy for Snowflake in India. Vijayant will be succeeding Vimal Venkatram, who has moved to a regional role for Snowflake, based in Singapore. 

Vijayant comes with over 27 years of extensive experience in senior sales positions across leading companies. Previously, he served as the Executive Director for Microsoft India, and was the Country Leader for the BFSI industry segment in the company. Prior to this, he also held leadership roles in Salesforce, SAP, and CA Technologies. 

He will spearhead Snowflake’s business expansion across India, overseeing strategy, sales and execution, fostering strategic partnership engagements across the country, and driving the adoption of Snowflake’s Data Cloud across various industries, such as retail and CPG, manufacturing, public sector, startups, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and BFSI.

“India is a dynamic growth market that is rapidly transitioning to a data-driven economy,” said Vijayant. “As Managing Director, my primary focus will be to help our customers fully mobilize their data into successful business outcomes. I am excited to join Snowflake at this pivotal point. Snowflake recently announced a slew of new features, including Snowflake Cortex currently in private preview, that facilitates businesses with swift development of AI applications, further bolstering their commitment to driving innovation in the Indian market. I look forward to working with the talented team at Snowflake India to support our customers in their quest for growth,” he added. 

Speaking on Vijayant’s appointment and Snowflake’s commitment to India, Sanjay Deshmukh, Senior Vice President of ASEAN and India, added, “Vijayant’s extensive experience in India of doing leadership roles with leading global technology organizations and helping customers in accelerating their transformation journey makes him the perfect fit for leading Snowflake in India. We believe that our business in India is at an inflection point of wider adoption across all industries, and with Vijayant’s successful track record in building and scaling businesses, we are confident that he will spearhead our expansion in the local market and drive strong growth across all of our portfolios.” 

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After being with the iconic National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) for close to five years, Shiv Kumar Bhasin has moved on from the firm to join IndusInd Bank as chief transformation officer. According to his LinkedIn update, he joined the bank in July and will be based out of Mumbai. 

At NSE, Bhasin served as the EVP and Group Chief Technology and Operations Officer (CTO/COO) since January 2019. He is considered to be instrumental in transforming the exchange’s technology landscape, making it a ‘fair, equitable, interoperable, resilient, and scalable platform,’ processing more than 20 billion order messages per day. During his tenure, Bhasin successfully leveraged agile, cognitive, and big data technologies to enhance the performance, security, and efficiency of the exchange. 

NSE is the world’s largest derivatives exchange by number of contracts traded and one of the largest stock exchanges in the world by market capitalization. 

Bhasin is a senior technology leader with over two decades of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to NSE, Bhasin worked as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of State Bank of India (SBI) where he had a pivotal role in the making of India’s first digital bank platform, Yono, which acquired more than 50 million new customers in less than 24 months and achieved a valuation of USD 80 billion. He pioneered several digital, data, CX and payment initiatives in SBI during his 4.6-year tenure at SBI. 

Previously, Bhasin served as the Head – IT Strategy, Architecture and Change Delivery at Barclays for close to 8 years and Chief Architect – Transfer Agency System Re-engineering at Fidelity Investments for 4 years. An IIT – Delhi alumnus, he is on the advisory board of Gartner and Oracle, along with several startups and international PE funds. 

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Data-centric AI platform Cogniquest Technologies has appointed Ganesh Mallya as Co-founder and Chief Business Officer.  

Ganesh has 21+ years of experience in leadership roles at organizations such as Infosys, Polaris, CSC, Hexaware and Clear, and is a serial entrepreneur with successful exits. He co-founded Ybanq, a B2B payments fintech backed by YCombinator, Soma Capital and FoundersX Ventures. Ybanq was acquired by Clear for their foray in to B2B payments in 2021.  

Cogniquest’s patent-pending platform optimizes document-intensive business processes to improve both operational and financial metrics. In his new role, Ganesh will focus on enabling global customer experience with the power of data-centric AI and ensure true digital transformation of customer enterprises. 

“Data-centric AI is the future of digital transformation. Cogniquest’s patent-pending data-centric AI platform is rightly placed to disrupt the intelligent document processing and data transformation space,” said Ganesh.  

“Ganesh comes with a strong leadership, 0-1 and sales experience in enterprise as well as the startup space. As we are scaling our organization, he will add to our leadership and take our solutions to global customers and enable digital transformation,” said Satish Grampurohit, Co-founder and Chief Advisor at Cogniquest Technologies.  

“Cogniquest’s data-centric AI platform was built with 15+ years of deep understanding of linguistics, mathematics, and cutting-edge AI/ML technologies. We are excited to welcome Ganesh to our stellar team of linguists, mathematicians and technologists. I am sure, together we will enable true digital transformation for global customers,” said Girish Kerodi, Co-founder and CEO of Cogniquest.  

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Atlassian Corporation, provider of team collaboration and productivity software, announced the promotion of c to President. In her new role, Ms. Bharadwaj will lead and support the newly unified ‘Markets and Transformations’ organization. With a focus on accelerating product innovation and driving enterprise adoption, her remit with the new structure brings the design, product, and engineering teams closer together than ever before to execute with more focus, efficiency, and speed. 

“Atlassian has always been long-term focused. Despite the current macroeconomic environment, we’re bullish on embracing our largest growth opportunities,” said Ms. Bharadwaj, President, Atlassian. “And that starts with uniting our products cohesively. Being focused and disciplined in this environment means we can remain nimble while executing with efficiency, emerging stronger than ever.” 

An accomplished executive with a track record of growing $1 billion+ businesses, building cohesive teams and shipping great products, Anu joined Atlassian in 2014 as the Head of Product for Jira. Most recently, she served as Atlassian’s Chief Operating Officer, a role she has held since August 2021. She is known for leading transformative initiatives across product lines at Atlassian, including the enterprise business, cloud platform teams and operations. 

“Anu has had an extraordinary impact on Atlassian over the last 9 years,” said Mike Cannon-Brookes, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Atlassian. “She’s a force of nature with a strong bias for taking action, on top of her ability to lead teams at scale that build on Atlassian’s culture of innovation. A close partner to Scott and me over the years, Anu’s expanded scope will see us work even more closely as we continue to serve our customers, helping them to unleash the potential of every team.” 

Prior to joining Atlassian, Ms. Bharadwaj served in various leadership positions at Microsoft Corporation. She is passionate about making the world a better place through technology and effective philanthropy, serving as a member of OutSystem’s board of directors and as the Chairperson of Atlassian Foundation. Ms. Bharadwaj holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from R.V. College of Engineering and resides in San Francisco, California. 

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Vineet Jaiswal has joined Essar Oil (UK) as Chief Digital and Information Officer. He joins Essar from Vedanta Resources where he most recently served as the Group Chief Digital and Technology officer, heading group wide responsibility for digital, IT and innovation functions. 

Essar Oil UK is a leading UK-focused downstream energy company whose main asset is the Stanlow Manufacturing Complex, one of the most advanced refineries in Europe situated close to the major cities of Liverpool and Manchester. Stanlow is the second largest refinery in UK. 

In his Linkedin post announcing the new position, Jaiswal said that Essar’s focus when it comes to new investments is around three themes, namely decarbonization, decentralisation and digitisation, all of which will drive future investments in the cutting edge of technology. He emphasized that the organization’s focus is to take integrated chains of infrastructure and transition them into green sustainable assets by decarbonising and making them future ready and accessible for next 20-25 years. 

“ESG has been quite close to my heart, and this role gives me tremendous opportunity to apply my learnings and in the process, help accelerate this transformational journey. I am super excited and looking forward to learn from new set of challenges and opportunities.”

“ESG has been quite close to my heart, and this role gives me tremendous opportunity to apply my learnings and in the process, help accelerate this transformational journey. I am super excited and looking forward to learn from new set of challenges and opportunities,” Jaiswal wrote. 

As the CDO & CTO of Vedanta Resources, Jaiswal spearheaded transformation initiatives that led to positive business impact across the value chain resulting in improvement of top-line/bottom-line as well as ESG benefits. 

In his career spanning three decades, he has also worked with organizations such as JSW, GE Digital, GE Energy Connections, GE Power Conversion, and GE Consumer & Industrial. 

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