Mr. K. Ananth Krishnan
Award Year: 2009 | Degree Year: 1988
Mr. K. Ananth Krishnan received his Master of Science Degree in Physics from IIT Delhi in 1985 and his Master of Technology Degree in Computer Science also from IIT Delhi in 1988.
Mr. Krishnan is presently the Chief Technology Officer of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and chairs the TCS Corporate Technology Board.
Mr. Krishnan joined TCS in February 1988, straight from the campus. As the Head of the TCS Systems Software Group in 1993, he led the group through several generations of technologies. He was instrumental in realigning the group toward a technology consulting, which is now part of TCS’s Global Consulting Practice. Subsequently in 1997, Mr. Krishnan set up the Systems Management Practice to take TCS’s in-house capabilities to market. This has evolved into TCS’s Infrastructure Services practice. He has been a member of the TCS Corporate Think- Tank since 1999, and has led several strategic initiatives like enterprise digitisation and collaboration, and introduction of the Economic Value Added model for assessing employees’ contributions. Mr. Krishnan has played a key role in two major IT initiatives related to the consolidation of internal systems and revamping the collaboration, communication, support and security infrastructure within the organisation.
In his role as the Chief Technology Officer, Mr. Krishnan oversees TCS’s substantial investments in R&D across 20 TCS Innovation Labs and over 600 people in TCS R&D. He is also the architect and driver of TCS’s Co- Innovation network, which connects a diverse set of innovators from Venture Capital firms, their startup company portfolios, TCS’s strategic partners, key customers and above all academic institutions from India and across the world. Mr. Krishnan is the leader of the Innovation initiative in the organisation and is the public face of TCS Innovation and Research. He is also the owner of the Intellectual Property strategy and is responsible for its execution.
Mr. Krishnan was named in Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders for 2007, and in Infoworld’s Top 25 Global CTOs in the same year. He was an invitee to the quarterly management review with the TCS Board (the executive committee of Tata Sons Limited) from April 2000 to March 2004. He has also served on several Advisory Boards of National and International organisations. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of the Computer Society of India and the ACM, and is also a member of the ACM India Council. He has been an invited faculty in the Department of Management Studies at IIT Madras. He also served on the Steering Committee for the PanIIT 2008 Alumni event in Chennai.
In honouring Mr. K. Ananth Krishnan, IIT Delhi recognises the outstanding contributions made by him as a Corporate Leader. Through his achievements, Mr. K. Ananth Krishnan has brought glory to the name of the Institute.
