Sumit Chowdhury

Sumit Dutta Chowdhury (Bengali: সুমিত দত্তা চৌধুরী) (born 30 December 1969) is an Indian entrepreneur, business executive and author. He has served in senior business and technology leadership roles in Consulting companies across US, Australia and India. He has also been a chief information officer in telecom and digital services companies.

Personal background

Sumit Dutta Chowdhury was born on 30 December 1969 in Jamshedpur, India.^[1] Chowdhury attended Loyola School, Jamshedpur and studied Fine Arts and Indian Music at The Tagore Society, Jamshedpur. He received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India; as well as a Master of Science degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD in Management from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He also received a certificate for company directors from the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Sumit has studied networks of everything all his life and created a fractal model of explaining how and why things happen to us. He has developed management principles to lead and influence a networked work force. He has been a key speaker in various forums on innovation, leadership and whole-brain thinking.^{[2] [3]}

He is married to Amrita Chowdhury, author and the Country Head and Publishing Director of Harlequin India. They have two children. As of 2014 they live in Mumbai, India.

Career

Sumit D Chowdhury is the CEO & Founder of Gaia Smart Cities, an M2M/IOT company focused on telecom and ICT solutions for smart cities.^[4] Sumit is also the technical advisor of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India.^[5][6] Sumit served as a President at Reliance Jio.He has also served as Vice-President and Partner of Global Business Services with IBM India and chief information officer of Reliance Communications. He spun off the company's IT Unit into Reliance Tech Services and became its founding chief executive officer. Prior to relocating to India, he has served as the interim Country Head of BearingPoint in Australia.He was the partner at KPMG Consulting in Australia and US prior to Bearing Point.^[7] He is also empanelled with Outstanding Speakers Bureau.^[8]

Author

• Sumit Chowdhury has launched his first book Rules of the Game :Discover, Learn , Invent The Art of Speeding Up Your Career in May 2014 (Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 9384052698). This book talks about how to get empowered to have an enjoyable career journey without trudging through life fearing change, failures, politics and uncertainty.

Board memberships

• ABM Knowledgeware Ltd, Independent Director ^[9]
• Visiting Faculty and Dean's Advisory Board, Carnegie Mellon University^[10]
• Hello Health, Member of Board^[11]
• Bravo Consulting, Member of Board
• Tele-Management-Forum, member of the board of directors^[12]
• Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), Australia, member of the Council of Governors
• Pine-Lodge Clinic, Melbourne, member of the Ethics Committee (2004–2005)
• Wireless Nova, non-executive director (2001–2004)

Honors and awards

• 2006–2009: CIO-100 Awards for being one of the leading CIOs in India for managing scale and innovation, ingenuity and working on bold projects.
• 2007: CTO Forum Hall of Fame Award
• 2007: Visionary Award from Symantec^[13]
• 2009: US Information Week Global CIO-50 – one of the TOP 50 CIOs of the World – in its first edition.^[14]
• 2009: CTO of the Year (CTO Forum)^[15]
• 2009: Pioneer CIO (CIOL Dataquest)^[16]
• 2009: CIO Hall of Fame (IDG Media)^[17]
• 2009: IDC Enterprise Innovation Award, Network Computing EDGE, PCQuest Best IT Implementation Award

Publications

• Chowdhury, Sumit, 1998. Struggle for Power and Influence: A Network study of Mergers, Acquisitions, Strategic Alliances and Competition in the Communication, Information and Entertainment Industries. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.
• Paper: Chowdhury, Sumit; Carley, Kathleen: "Power and Influence in Inter-Organizational Networks" (in the Telecommunications, Information and Entertainment industries) presented at the American Sociological Meetings in August 1998, San Francisco, CA. published in Administrative Science Quarterly Journal.
• Invited Chairperson for "Telecommunication Network & Service Planning" session- at INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Science) – 97 at San Diego, CA.
• Invited speaker on Telecommunications Network Planning at National Conference on Telecommunications Network Technology and Service Planning in New Delhi, India in 1996.
• Worked on National Science Foundation (NSF) grant (IRI-9312143) on Inferential Disclosure Risk in Computer Databases with Professors George Duncan, Ramayya Krishnan, Sumitra Mukherjee and Stephen Roehrig.
• Paper: Sumit D. Chowdhury, G. Duncan, R. Krishnan, S. Roehrig, S. Mukherjee (1996), "Disclosure Detection in Multivariate Categorical Databases: An Optimization Approach". Published in Management Science Jan 2000.
• Economic Times Article: Media & Entertainment Industry at Crossroads

References