Rajendra S. Pawar (Devanagari: राजेंद्र स पवार ) is the chairman of NIIT.[1] He co-founded NIIT along with his batch-mate Vijay K. Thadani and with the active support of Shiv Nadar. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2011.
Contents |
He is a distinguished alumnus of Scindia School, Gwalior and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Rajendra S. Pawar is considered a great visionary and developer of human resource potential. He has played active role in instituting Quality processes and Crosby's Complete Quality Management System in NIIT. He is interested in foreseeing the trends and crucial directions in the deployment of IT for quantum change in organisation effectiveness. He is a member of the National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development. He heads the Quality Committees of various Industry bodies, including the South African President's International Advisory Council (PIAC) on Information Society.
Rajendra S. Pawar is Chairman and co-founder of the NIIT Group, that encompasses two businesses—NIIT Technologies Limited, the software and services arm and NIIT Limited, the leading Global Talent Development Corporation. Set up in 1981, NIIT pioneered the computer education market in India, creating a completely new industry segment and taking it to consolidation and maturity. Pawar has played a leadership role in nurturing NIIT and building it into a leading Global Talent Development Corporation.
By pioneering NIIT’s innovative franchising model, he enabled the company to unleash a wave of entrepreneurship across the globe, providing young people with the opportunity to create viable businesses centred on IT learning.
Pawar led NIIT’s foray into the software and services market, creating NIIT Technologies, a global IT Solutions organization. Assessed at SEI-CMMi Level 5, NIIT Technologies serves clients across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Pawar is a member of Prime Minister's National Council on Skill Development, a council chaired by the Prime Minister of India.
He is a member of the Planning Commission’s Task Force on Skill Development and has also served on the Prime Minister's National Task force, which aimed at making India an IT Superpower by 2008. He is also helping the Government of South Africa develop a growth strategy for its ICT industry.
Actively involved in India’s key Chambers of Commerce, Pawar has led several ICT industry initiatives, giving voice to the sector’s aspirations and goals. He has been a Founder Member of NASSCOM (the National Association of Software & Service Companies). He is currently a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum.
Global Business Intelligence firm, Ernst & Young conferred on Pawar its prestigious Master Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1999. He has also been named the IT man of the Year by IT industry journal, Dataquest. Pawar has been awarded ‘The Global India Splendor Award’ on the occasion of 60th year of India’s independence, for his work on developing human resource potential.
Known for promoting industry-academia alliances, Pawar has been working closely with the country’s well-known educational institutions. He is on the Board of Governors of India’s premier engineering institution, IIT Delhi; country’s first global business school, the Indian School of Business; and the Scindia School.
Pawar studied at the Scindia School, Gwalior and graduated from the country’s prestigious engineering institution, the IIT, Delhi in 1972 where he pursued the B. Tech programme in electrical engineering and received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of IIT in 1995. He has also been awarded an Honorary Doctoral Degree by the Rajiv Gandhi Technical University in 2005.