Management Team

Download Image	Rajendra S. Pawar, Chairman & Co-founder, NIIT Group Mr. Rajendra S. Pawar is Chairman and co-founder of the NIIT Group, that encompasses two businesses—NIIT Technologies Limited, the software and services arm and NIIT Limited, the leading Global Talent Development Corporation. Set up in 1981, NIIT pioneered the computer education market in India, creating a completely new industry segment and taking it to consolidation and maturity. Mr. Pawar has played a leadership role in nurturing NIIT and building it into a leading Global Talent Development Corporation. By pioneering NIIT’s innovative franchising model, he enabled the company to unleash a wave of entrepreneurship across the globe, providing young people with the opportunity to create viable businesses centred on IT learning. Mr. Pawar led NIIT’s foray into the software and services market, creating NIIT Technologies, a global IT Solutions organization. Assessed at SEI-CMMi Level 5, NIIT Technologies serves clients across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Mr. Pawar is a member on the Prime Minister’s National Council on Skill Development; has served on the PM’s National Taskforce commissioned to develop India into an IT Superpower; is an advisor to the Hunan province of China; was a member of PIAC (Presidential International Advisory Council) of the Government of South Africa for IT. Actively involved in India’s key Chambers of Commerce, Mr. Pawar has led several ICT industry initiatives, giving voice to the sector’s aspirations and goals. He has been a Founder Member of NASSCOM (the National Association of Software & Service Companies). He is currently a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum. Global Business Intelligence firm, Ernst & Young conferred on Mr. Pawar its prestigious Master Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1999. He has also been named the IT man of the Year by IT industry journal, Dataquest. Pawar has been awarded ‘The Global India Splendor Award’ on the occasion of 60th year of India’s independence, for his work on developing human resource potential. He is a Fellow of the Computer Society of India and the Institution of Electronics & Telecom Engineers. Known for promoting industry-academia alliances, Mr. Pawar has been working closely with the country’s well-known educational institutions. He is on the Board of Governors of India’s premier institutions- IIT Delhi, country’s first global business school, the Indian School of Business, ISB Hyderabad, IIM Bangalore and the Scindia School. Mr. Pawar studied at the Scindia School, Gwalior and graduated from the country’s prestigious engineering institution, IIT, Delhi in 1972 where he pursued the B. Tech programme in electrical engineering and received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of IIT in 1995. He has also been awarded an Honorary Doctoral Degree by the Rajiv Gandhi Technical University in 2005. Having revolutionized the IT Training industry, Pawar is involved in establishing an innovative model in Higher Education. Currently a member of the Planning Commission’s Consultative Group on Higher Education, he is deeply involved in shaping the non-for-profit NIIT University. Mr. Pawar is an avid reader, writer and music buff.
Download Image	Vijay K. Thadani, Chief Executive Officer, NIIT Vijay K. Thadani is the Chief Executive Officer of NIIT Ltd, a leading Global Talent Development Corporation. As the co-founder of NIIT Group, he has built an organization that is recognised for its visionary role in bringing the benefits of Information Technology, both as a professional skill and as a learning tool, to the masses. He serves on the Board of NIIT Technologies Limited, a leading SEI-CMMi Level 5 assessed IT Solutions organisation, servicing customers in the USA, Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific, and India. Vijay led the Group’s globalization efforts since 1991, taking the NIIT flag to over 40 countries. As the Chairman of NIIT USA, and based out of Atlanta, he mentored NIIT's Strategic Alliance Program that resulted in successful acquisitions of leading technology companies. He was actively involved in strengthening and consolidating NIIT’s presence in China. Vijay has been actively engaged with many Industry Associations. He served as President of the Indian IT industry association, MAIT and also chaired the Indian Government’s Committee on National Information Infrastructure Policy. He served as the Chairman of the IT Committee of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in USA. He is currently the Chairman of CII National Committee on Education and also serves as the Chairman of the National Accreditation Board for Education and Training (NABET), which works under the aegis of the Quality Council of India. He serves on the board of CompTIA USA, an association advancing the global interests of information technology industry and also as a member of the India Advisory Board of the Maastricht University, Netherlands. He was recently appointed as a member of the Strategy Council of Global Alliance for ICT and Development of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA-GAID). A ‘Distinguished Alumnus’ of the premier Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Vijay was honored with the position of ‘Economic Consultant’ to Chongqing, world’s largest city in the People’s Republic of China.
Download Image	P. Rajendran, Director & Chief Operating Officer, NIIT Parappil Rajendran, Director & Chief Operating Officer of NIIT joined the company at the time of its inception in 1982 and has been a part of the core team which has developed the organization and brought it to its present position of international standing. NIIT, an Indian-born multinational company, is known for many innovations in IT education. Offering Learning and Knowledge Solutions to companies, individuals, and institutions, NIIT is touching over 5 million learners in 40 countries across the globe. Mr. Rajendran an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, led NIIT’s computer & computer assisted education in the schools segment, which now touches 7.8 million children from over 9,500 government and private schools. A people’s-person and a believer in leveraging Information Technology for HR competitiveness, he has helped NIIT emerge as one of the most preferred employers in the Indian IT Industry. The company received the 1998 National HRD Award for the best HR practices, the World HRD Congress 2000 Award for Innovative HR practices and the Delhi Management Association – Watson Wyatt Award 2004 for Excellence in Innovative HR Practice. Mr. Rajendran has also been actively associated with Indian industry associations like Confederation of Indian Industry, Manufacturers’ Association of Information Technology, NASSCOM and professional bodies like Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, USA. He takes keen interest in the area of deployment of ICT for human development and creation of jobs in the future.

Download Image	G Raghavan, leads NIIT’s Individual Learning Business as President. It is his responsibility to grow the education business, globally. Raghavan joined NIIT in 2005, after a career spanning 25 years in sales, marketing, product management, e-business and general management in both Global Companies like Carrier Corporation and Ingram Micro and India based Companies like Voltas and Madras Cements. He was with Carrier, the air conditioning division of United Technologies Corporation of USA, for 17 years and has held varying responsibilities for them in Asia Pacific, the USA, and India where he was the President & Executive Director of the company. Before joining NIIT, “Raghu”, as he is known, was with Ingram Micro as its Managing Director for India, before moving to the technology distribution company’s Asia Pacific operations in Singapore. As a part of his role in NIIT, Raghu serves on the e-skills Council of South Africa and has also had the privilege of being appointed as “Chief Consultant” for the Government of Wuxi, China. Raghavan holds a Post-Graduate qualification in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and has a bachelor’s degree from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore.
Download Image	Ashish Basu Mr. Ashish Basu is President, New Business Incubation (NBI) at NIIT. In this capacity he leads new business ventures for NIIT including providing oversight to new acquisitions and joint ventures. Recently, he led the team forming a joint venture with Genpact for BPO training. Under Mr. Basu, NBI will provide a platform for nurturing small and new businesses and speeding up their growth to maturity at NIIT. He is a member of the board of several NIIT companies and ventures including ElementK, Evolv, NIIT Institute of Process Excellence, NIIT USA Inc, and NIIT UK. Prior to this assignment, Mr. Basu was President and Global Head – Enterprise Learning Solutions at NIIT. He grew this business over 15 years to become one of the top 5 global learning services companies. He led NIITs acquisition and subsequent integration of Cognitive Arts and later ElementK – both leaders in their respective fields. Mr. Basu brings over 25 years of experience in the area of education technology and instructional design. He has published many articles and has been a speaker in areas ranging from K-12 learning approaches to advanced technical learning in forums in India, Europe and the US. Mr. Basu has consulted for and managed assignments for a wide range of organizations across the globe. These include IBM, Reuters, AT&T, The World Bank and USAID. He has been interested in the field of Quality and was a pioneer in introducing standards into NIIT starting from 1993, first with ISO 9000 and then SEI CMM levels. The content development function was the first in the world to be certified to both these standards. He also started and led the Institute of Quality Ltd (IQL) a leading Quality and Process consulting organization. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Benchmarking Network. Mr. Basu is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore and IIT Mumbai. He lives in Gurgaon with his wife and two children.
Download Image	Dr. Smarajit Dey is President – Strategic Initiatives, and responsible for NIIT’s new businesses. In this capacity, he oversees the operations of the Institute for Finance, Banking and Insurance (IFBI – NIIT’s new entity with equity participation by ICICI bank), and NIIT Imperia, NIIT’s Executive Management Education venture. Earlier, Dr. Dey has led NIIT’s Individual Learning Business, set-up NIIT Online Learning Ltd., headed Corporate Development & Quality, and managed NIIT’s Software and Learning initiatives in East India & Bangladesh. Born in 1957, Dr Dey holds a Doctorate in Information Systems from BITS Pilani. Dr. Dey was on the faculty of BITS Pilani before joining NIIT, where he was closely associated with its Industry-Collaborative Education programs. Dr Dey also serves on the Executive Board of the Association of Indian Management Schools.
Download Image	L. Balasubramanian a graduate in Applied Sciences from the Faculty of Engineering, College of Engineering Guindy, University of Madras, is the President of NIIT’s school learning solutions. Mr. Balasubramanian has over 30 years of experience across IT industry segments. He works closely with governments and private institutions to empower over two million young minds, using technology, across 7000 schools in India. Since his induction into NIIT in 1988, Mr. Balasubramanian has successfully led key assignments in the Software and Education space, including the company’s India-South Geography initiative. He also carries experience from his stint at DCM Data systems and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization).