CXO of the Week: Purshottam Purswani, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Atos India

Your top priority while making decisions to improve tech infra in your organization?

Every IT organization is realigning itself to manage Digital Transformation initiatives, and it cannot be achieved without modernizing the IT infrastructure. IT infra should always be business driven, providing the agility and scalability for bringing continuous innovation in products and services. Modernizing IT infra should result in accelerated time to market.

Challenges you face in driving digital transformation?

As Digital transformation leader for Atos India, our ambition from digital transformation is for the company to increase competitiveness, for employee satisfaction and improve client experience. Eventually, we want to increase communication to improve visibility vis-à-vis clients, talents, and analysts. From challenges perspective, the challenge is the existing process and tools alignment, handle change management with skills needed which will drive this initiative.

Inspiring CXO: Tanveer Saulat

Do you feel that freshers in the industry come with only basic knowledge but don’t have the right skills to fulfil job requirements? If yes, your suggestion to students and colleges?

Yes, I would agree! We strategically recruit freshers from premier institutes of India, but most of the time they are unable to keep up the skills needed for the current digital world. Today, IT market is driven by IoT, Automation, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence initiatives. Moreover, careers are no longer narrowly defined by jobs & skills, but through experiences and learning agility. So, they have to constantly upgrade capabilities, and onboard themselves into new approaches to learning & career development.

What’s your mantra to become successful in life?

Foster a customer-oriented culture and people first approach. Don’t be afraid of failures, build yourself to Survive Failure.

What would you like to give back to the society?

I believe that if you respect mother nature, you can fulfil all your dream you cherished by participating in plantation and cleanliness drive. I would like to offer my digital skills obtained through my profession to students/enabling NGO on the digital path to optimize their operations.

Inspiring CXO: Rana Vikram Anand

Your favourite book and what are you reading now?

Since I am a technologist, I like to read books linked to the topic. My favourite books are “Who Moved My Cheese.” Currently, I am reading “Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone”.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

I like to read and play sports during my spare time.

Achievements (Awards & Recognitions)

As the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Atos India, Purshottam is responsible for the strategy and driving innovation for local and multi-national customers. In his role, he displays thought leadership with regard to using business technology to address the current and future challenges faced by organizations. As a member of the Atos Scientific Community and an Atos Distinguished Expert, Purshottam works on digital technologies around IoT, IIOT, Cloud, Big Data, AI, and Blockchain.

Experience

With more than 20 years cross-industry IT experience in the Telecom, Manufacturing and Financial sectors, Purshottam began his career as a Software Engineer at Tera Informatics.

First Job – Software Engineer at Tera Informatics

Education – Bachelor Degree in Electronics (BE) from the University of Mumbai/ Post-graduation in IT from C-DAC: Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, India