A jam packed YB Chavan Auditorium witnessed some of the best IT companies getting rewarded for their outstanding performance, says Chandragupta Amritkar

What's responsible for India's economic success story? Many feel that it's largely India's IT outsourcing and tech savvy enthusiasts. It has also been stated many times that India needs to emulate the success of IT and replicate it in other sectors including agriculture and biotech. Understanding its potential and its utility for the development of the State and in order to encourage IT companies to give out their best the, Govt of Maharashtra decided to institute 'Maharashtra Information Technology Awards'.

These awards have been instituted by the State to commemorate birth anniversary of the late Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, and are awarded each year on August 20, which is celebrated as the Information Technology Day. The awards presented in six categories are aimed at felicitating companies in the State of Maharashtra for their outstanding performance during the year. The effort is towards promoting entrepreneurship, ensuring rapid proliferation of IT in the society and encourage employment generation in the IT industry. The six categories include IT Hardware, IT Software, IT Enabled Services, IT Education and Training, IT Infrastructure, R&D in IT and Special Achievement.

This year, the awards were presented for both the years 2009 and 2010. Most of the awardees expressed great pleasure in winning the awards and felt it would encourage them to put in more efforts.

ESDS Software Solution Pvt Ltd was the only company to win two awards - one in 2009 as IT Enterprise Special Award and the Green IT Infrastructure Award for 2010. And this company is neither located in Mumbai nor Pune but in Nashik. I had the pleasure of visiting the company a few months back and was truly astonished - the greenery, the entrance, the swimming pool, the canteen on the 3rd floor - the whole attire was impressive. The company's datacentre is the first fully managed datacentre in Maharashtra. The office cum datacentre building is a modern example of Energy Conservation and Green Building in Maharashtra. "We plant 2 trees for each hosted server as this helps us to offset our carbon footprints. Apart from this our air conditioning technology helps us reduce our power consumption by 60%. We have energy efficient servers, sewage treatment plant, rainwater harvesting system, solar-powered illumination system and dual cavity walls to reduce sensible heat load," said Piyush Somani, CEO, ESDS Software Solution.

Sunil Rajadhyaksha, Executive Director HOV Services Limited which won the BPO/KPO award 2010 said "Maharashtra has been the most promising destination for our company considering its strength in terms of human resource availability, connectivity and infrastructure. It's an honour and great pride for our company to be awarded with Maharashtra Information Technology Award 2010."

Saurabh Gadgil, MD, Seamless Education Academy, won the award in the category of IT (Multi-media/Entertainment/Gaming) said "I feel extremely proud and overwhelmed while receiving this award. I am thankful to the Government of Maharashtra for this award and honoured while receiving the award at the hands of such dignitaries. I would also like to thank one very important person for this award, whose presence has made a very meaningful contribution to the success of the institute, Mr Deepak Shikarapur. He has always been an integral part of the institute and we will continue to do great work together."

KPIT Cummins won the award in the Software category based on its outstanding performance over the years, excellent contribution to the growth of the IT industry in the region and its innovative solution offerings. Ravi Pandit, Chairman and Group CEO, KPIT Cummins Infosystems Ltd said, "We are honoured to be selected for this esteemed award and thank the Government of Maharashtra and the jury in recognising our efforts. We have started and have grown in Maharashtra and we believe that the efforts by the Government of Maharashtra to promote education and industry in the State have helped us immensely through our journey. Over the years, we have endeavoured to be a leader by combining our in-depth industry experience with a strong technology understanding and by creating innovative and effective solutions for our customers globally."

OPTRA Systems, leading software company in digital healthcare solutions was awarded the prestigious Maharashtra IT Award by Government of Maharashtra under category of Innovation (R&D). Abhijeet Gholap, President and CEO OPTRA Systems said, "Its a great honour to be recognised as innovative company by Maharashtra Government. We are extremely happy to be chosen as recipient of this award. It validates our vision to build new age India by leveraging Intellectual Property than acting mere service providers. It also emphasises our mission to bring change in the IT culture of this country where presently headcounts are given more importance than knowledge capital. Our solutions are being used worldwide by leading pharmaceutical companies and hospitals. We at OPTRA are happy to serve the mankind where our efforts are to bring objective assessment of clinical conditions and improve healthcare by virtue of expediting drug discovery, development and testing. Our solutions achieve drug companies reduce the time to bring new drugs to the market, while patients get benefits by improved assessment of their disease conditions."

Mr Vikas Khanvelkar, Managing Director, DesignTech Systems Ltd received the award for their significant contribution towards IT and Engineering Services. DesignTech Systems is a leading CAD/CAM Engineering, Product Lifecycle Management and healthcare solution provider in India with offices and channel network spread all over the country. With more than 1800, customers spread across industry segments they work on cutting edge technologies and enable customers derive returns on their investments. He said, "I am extremely honoured to receive such a prestigious award from Government of Maharashtra. I am happy that our dedicated contribution towards I.T and hard work in the field of engineering software services has been recognized and appreciated by the Government. I dedicate this award to entire team of DesignTech Systems for their support that has helped us to reach this stage."

Quick Heal Technologies Pvt Ltd won the award for their unique software security solutions. The promoters Kailash Katkar and Sanjay Katkar entered the field of Antivirus software development in the year 1995 by establishing a virus analysis lab in Pune. Today Quick Heal is rated as No. 1 Antivirus product in India. The awards were presented by Ashok Chavan Chief Minister, Maharashtra along with Rajendra Darda Cabinet Minister of Industries and Sachin Ahir Maharashtra State Minister. Also present on the dais were J P Dange, CS, A M Khan, PS, Industries and Maharashtra Bhushan, Padmashree, Dr Vijay Bhatkar. Speaking on the occasion, while congratulating the winners, Ashok Chavan also asked IT firms to prepare software with Marathi fonts. He said, "Marathi is the local language of Maharashtra. It is used in all government and semi-government organisations as an official language. We want to reach out to the masses by using the technology for systematic implementation of the government's services. We are looking forward to give it global recognition. For this we would like IT companies to develop software's with Marathi fonts which could be globally accepted," Chavan said at IT Awards function.

(The writer is with Global Features and can be contacted at chandraguptaa@hotmail.com)