VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE
VARINDIA organized the 12th annual event "
VARINDIA Star Nite Awards - 2013" in the Capital recently. This award fiesta is the event in India that is considered to be the litmus test for IT corporates for their marketing policies, strategies and initiatives that involve vendors, distributors and resellers. Eminent personalities and top performers of the IT industry in various categories bore witness to this gala affair where IT companies did technology showcasing of their products.
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VARINDIA Star Nite Awards -2013, which also played host to the felicitation ceremony of the top performers of the Indian IT industry for the current year, commenced with the lighting of the ceremonial lamp by the guests of honour and other high-profile dignitaries. The guests included Sarvashri N. Ravi Shanker, IAS, Additional Secretary, C-DOT & Administrator, USOF, GoI; Sivakumar N., Vice-President – PC Business, Toshiba India;
Jagannath Pattnaik, Director – Sales, Kaspersky Lab;
Ajay Kaul, Director & General Manager, Global Commercial Channel, Dell India;
Asoke K. Laha , Managing Director & CEO, Interra IT;
Kshitij M. Kotak, President, ASIRT; Laxmi Narayan Rao, CTO – Technology Services, HP India; Suresh Reddy, Vice-President – Enterprise, Huawei Telecommunications; Nalin R. Patel, President, AIT, Bengaluru; Manoj Chugh, Global Head, Business Development (Enterprise Division), Tech Mahindra; K. V. Jagannath, Managing Director, Choice Solutions; Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher, VARINDIA; and Ms S. Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA.
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Shri N. Ravi Shanker, IAS, Additional Secretary, C-DOT & Adminstrator, USOF, GoI, congratulated VARINDIA for having organized such an event and stressed upon the importance of R&D by developing infrastructure by digitally connecting 2.50 lakh villages under his leadership of Bharat Broadband Networks Ltd (BBNL). “When I travel to places, I still sense a shortage of infrastructure. While the Indian economy may have had a little slip in the growth path, there is still a lot of hope for the ICT sector. Statistics brought out two years back talked of broadband growth and this Broadband Revolution will facilitate 600 million connections by 2020.”
Dr Ajay Sharma, Joint Secretary – IT, Department of IT, MC&IT, GoI, addressed the audience on various opportunities, in how the country is marching ahead towards becoming a manufacturing hub and an opportunity unveiling for global companies to look into the business opportunity in the Indian ICT industry.
Manoj Chugh, Global Head (Business Development), Tech Mahindra, spoke on how the social media and Internet are influencing the people to take decisions and how retailers can bank on this to woo their customers. “The world is changing dramatically when we talk of technology. It is time marketers and retailers start looking at the social media more seriously as ignorance of it can stand as a fundamental building block to the stagnancy of IT. There are challenges to it but they can always be met.”
Envisaging the big role they are going to play in shaping the future of the country, the Awards also saw a few notable Technology Evangelists and Marketing & Business wizards in the country getting recognized. Afterwards, the veterans were called upon the stage and felicitated with a token of appreciation.
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In the Star Nite Tech Byte section,
Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, NVIDIA, and Laxmi Narayan Rao, CTO – Technology Services, Hewlett-Packard, were the two eminent speakers who addressed the audience and spoke at length on the opportunities for the VARs and the potential of Cloud in the sector of digital convergence in India. The Tech Byte section is an Elevator Pitch in which the speaker is given 5 minutes to explain the product/technology of his company or any other market trends and opportunities. Laxmi Narayan in his short speech stressed on the mass explosion of data that is happening today. “By 2015, the amount of data that will get generated will be 1 Zettabyte, which is 1 billion Terabytes. There is a massive opportunity out there as this data keeps doubling every single year, something that is redefining the IT landscape like never before.”
The Panel discussion for the evening was themed around “Best Practices for Organizations to look into Social Intelligence” and was moderated by the industry veteran, Laxmi Narayan Rao, CTO – Technology Services, Hewlett-Packard. The discussion emphasized on the broader role that the social media will play in influencing the competitive strategy and channelling this information to people within the organization which needs it at an optimal point in time. The panellists who participated in the discussion were Dr Govind, CEO, NIXI, GoI; Sarvashri Vipin Tyagi, Director, C-DOT, GoI; Jagannath Pattnaik, Director – Sales, Kaspersky Lab; Subrotah Biswas, Director – India & SW Asia, Logitech India; Ajay Kaul, Director & General Manager, Global Commercial Channel, Dell India; Nalin R. Patel, President, AIT, Bengaluru; Kshitij M. Kotak, President – ASIRT; Sivakumar N., Vice-President – PC Business, Toshiba India; Himanshu Chawla, Director – Channel Sales, Microsoft India; Aneesh Dhawan, Regional Sales Head, VMware India; and Gurpreet Malik, Country Retail Head, PPS, HP India.
The Vendors Awards that followed thereafter were the most-awaited moment of the evening. This year, a total of 65 categories have been announced and close-to 50 vendors were awarded for their remarkable contribution in their respective field and taking the IT industry to excellent heights.
The Tech Session that took place before the start of the event had the presence of 70 SIs and leading Channel partners representing 22 associations. Besides being a platform to discuss some of the Channel issues, it had presentations from Huawei Telecommunications and Sparsh on the company overview and the opportunities.
There was also a Lucky Draw contest organized by four companies - Epson, Canon, Amtrak and BenQ amidst the event where lucky winners walked away winning 2 Amtrak tablets, a printer from Epson while 2 printers from Canon and 1 digital camera from BenQ.
It was a momentous day for all the winners of the VARINDIA Star Nite Awards who were filled with a sense of joy and pride, while others looked forward to the next VARINDIA Star Nite Awards 2014............
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