Former Union Telecommunication Secretary R Chandrashekhar has taken over as the president of the IT industry body National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), replacing Som Mittal, who served as its chief since 2007 and retired on January 3, a statement said.
“I feel privileged and look forward to lead NASSCOM in its next journey of achieving the vision and aspiration of $300 billion revenues by 2020. The opportunities are very vast at this particular juncture and exciting times lie ahead for the industry,” Chandrashekhar said in a statement.
The newly appointed NASSCOM chief added that the future of India’s IT-BPM sector seems positive as the industry is evolving in terms of scale, complexity and innovation.
“Going forward, enabling radical transformation of key sectors in India through the use of ICT to increase access, enhance efficiency and enable innovation in the sector are going to be some of our priority focus areas. The rapidly accelerating trend of innovation and entrepreneurship in the ICT sector affects several domains and provides clear indicators that the journey has begun,” he said.
Chandrashekhar is NASSCOM’s fourth president. Previous presidents to head the industry body were late Dewang Mehta and Kiran Karnik.
Chandrashekhar served as the chairman of Telecom Commission and Secretary of the Department of Telecom till March last year.
He did M Sc in Chemistry from IIT-Bombay and received a MS degree in Computer Science from the Pennsylvania State University, US. Besides being involved in forming National Telecom Policy 2012, Chandrashekhar also played a major role in the first National IT Policy and National Policy on Electronics during his dual role of IT and Telecom Secretary at the centre.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)