Krishan Dhawan is assuredly prophetic about his vision of India and speaks of it with such an earnest candor that it almost grips you. His sanguine enthusiasm about the Indian market, the emerging dominance of Indian IT, coming of age of e-governance projects, etc. do not seem feigned, quite different from the PR drivel expected from a multinational company's Indian head.

Dhawan heads the Indian operations of the world's largest enterprise software company, Oracle -- a company renowned for its cut-throat market practices. India is very strategic to Oracle's plan of global dominance, not only for the sheer market size but also for the skill sets available. If at all Dhawan is overawed by the expectations involved, he does magnificently well to mask it.

It has been over a year since Dhawan took over the reins as the managing director of Oracle India, he terms his stint till now as very satisfying. He has taken a keen interest in the government space, and is drumming up support for e-governance initiatives. Like infrastructure, IT is also a precondition for growth, he feels. For example, he is excited about the project entailing setting up of 100 thousand village centers across India, "it will reduce the digital divide", he says.

Dhawan was born in Prague, erstwhile Czechoslovakia, his father being a part of the Indian Foreign Service. He very much toured across the globe before returning to India for education. He joined St. Stephens in Delhi, and in his own words terms himself to be reasonably okay, without being immodest in academics. His father wanted him to appear for the civil services exams and was disappointed when Dhawan opted for a management degree from IIM Ahmedabad.

Dhawan joined Bank of America in 1978 in a campus placement. He reminisces on how different things were in those times. Certainly they were; take for instance, Dhawan's starting pay packet was some Rs 24,000 annually, compare it with the latest placement of an IIM grad who settled for Rs. 88 lakhs annually! The next few years, Dhawan spent traveling across Asia, and finally settling down in the U.S., before the return to home bug set in and he landed back in India.

One thing Dhawan constantly harps about, is the need to do something different. So he decided to hang his boots as a banker after 23 years to take up some "different assignment." Briefly, he was associated with EXL Service, a BPO company as chief marketing officer. He was working as an independent consultant, when Oracle approached his for the job. And he opted for it, making a transition from a banker to an IT company's head was not tough as he terms it as being a manager in one industry to being a manager in another industry.

Asides from his hectic job profile, Dhawan manages to find time for certain idyllic things and projects. He is quite excited about a group formed by him and his friends from IIM, called as IIMPACT. "There are no paucity of good causes in India, we guys decided to focus on girl-child education in the rural belt." The group has helped in educating some 600 girls in a village in Rajastan and we are looking at opening another chapter in the hinterland of Uttar Pradesh, he says.

He also loves riding off on the weekends on his motorbike Royal Enfield Thunderbird to places of interest around Delhi. On the sports front, he follows Indian cricket, like everyone else, English premier league soccer, NBA & NFL. On being pressed to pick a cricketer, Dhawan opts for Rahul Dravid, "He is a team guy, and I have immense respect for him." His other interests are reading and music, and he is an 'Art of Living' adherent as well. Dhawan's first car was a Fiat, or what we knew as Premier Padmini, currently he travels in company-owned Merc and vouches for Skoda, as he owns one.

It has been a few years since Dhawan returned to India, and is quite happy at having done so. "Things are so much different today from the times I started off. There is an air of positiveness all around. People are returning back. India apart form China is the most desirable places to be today. In fact things are so exciting and positive that it is almost scary", gushes Dhawan. He has immense faith on Indian ability and institutions, "we are a democracy and the pace of change may not be as rapid, but it is ingrained and hopefully irreversible," he says before adding with a hint of warning, "the world is watching us with envy and expectations."

In retrospect, Dhawan is quite content at the ways things have gone in his life, "things have played out more or less as I expected them too." Though, he wishes, "I was starting my career today as there is so much more I could do." But he can take heart, in spite of starting of in the troubled seventies, he has done mighty well and he certainly does not need an oracle to tell him that he is bound to do all too well in the future.

Shashwat Chaturvedi
CyberMedia News

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