Thursday, 4 October 2007

Som Mittal To Be Next Nasscom Chief

Som Mittal, the chief of HP’s service business for Asia Pacific including Japan will be the next president of National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), the IT Trade body.....

Som Mittal, the chief of HP’s service business for Asia Pacific including Japan will be the next president of National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), the IT Trade body.

He succeeds Kiran Karnik and will be appointed in January 2008. This is the first instance of a head of a major software division leaving the cushy job and joining a trade body for a fraction of the cost. Earlier presidents Umang Mehta and the president Kiran Karnik were brought from outside.

After being appointed as the chief of Nasscom, Mittal said, “I am honoured to take up this role at this exciting stage of the industry’s lifecycle when the Indian information technology and IT-enabled services sector has established its position in the global landscape and is continuously defining newer benchmarks. I look forward to leading team-Nasscom in these interesting times, to enable both continuity and change to happen.”

Referring to future challenges, Mittal said that apart from sustaining growth of the IT industry, the real challenge would be to generate resources and prepare a workforce through right education and excellent training module so that nobody could erode India’s competitiveness in the sector.