Mr Natarajan Chandrasekaran, CEO of India''s largest IT Services company, Tata Consultancy Services has been conferred the Dataquest IT Person of the Year award for 2011—one of the most coveted honors in Indian IT here at a function held late last evening. 

The award is given byDataquest,India's oldest and largest IT magazine, every year to an individual for making extraordinary contribution to Indian IT. The jury led by Mr Pramod Bhasin of Genpact (and 2010 Dataquest IT person of the year) unanimously decided on Mr Chandrasekaran who is regarded as the face of next generation leadership in the Indian IT. In the context of most of the first generation leaders stepping down, there was apprehension about a leadership vacuum being created. The jury felt that 

Mr Chandrasekaran, through his able leadership has proved that any such fear is unfounded. 

A TCS insider, Mr Chandrasekaran also stands as a role model for millions of programmers and engineers as he started as a trainee in TCS and rose to become its top leader. 

“Chandra's able leadership is a testimony to the fact that Indian IT companies have it in them to grow extraordinary leadership internally,” noted Pradeep Gupta, Chairman of CyberMedia, the publishers of Dataquest. “The success of Indian IT is not a one-time achievement of only a few individuals,” he added.  

Mr Kiran Karnik was awarded for his Lifetime Contribution to Indian IT. Mr Karnik, who led NASSCOM as president for 7 years also headed the government appointed board of Satyam that moved fast and in a transparent manner and was instrumental in establishing the credibility ofIndia in the wake of the Satyam crisis. He is also associated with many educational institutions.