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“You are the people who have put India on the (global) map. It is easy to build an app but to scale it in Indian conditions, it is impossible without you guys…,” said Priyank Kharge, Minister for Electronics, IT/BT and Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Karnataka government, presenting YourStory’s India’s CTO Excellence Awards 2024.

“…You have fearlessly tried to do things differently, and I think that is something that the Europeans and the Americans want to learn from us,” he added.

As the audience roared with applause, recognising and celebrating the pillars of the Indian tech ecosystem, Honorable Minister Priyank Kharge, and Pramod Varma, CTO, EkStep Foundation; Co-founder, FIDE; and ex-Chief Architect, Aadhaar and India Stack, presented the awards to the country’s top 22 tech leaders.

YourStory, always earnestly attempting to discover, spot and provide a podium to the country’s greatest and potential entrepreneurs, recognised the architects of the country’s exponential technological advances and scale, at the India Tech Leaders Conclave 2024—an exclusively curated gathering of the top tech visionaries and leaders of the country—held at Shangri-La, Bengaluru on June 21.

Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO, YourStory said, “Our goal is to bring well-deserved recognition to the tech leaders who have played crucial roles behind the scenes, shaping their company’s success and India’s tech story.”

At the one-day event centred on celebrating tech leaders, YourStory took the game a step further by presenting India’s CTO Excellence Awards 2024, in association with Longhouse Consulting, recognising and celebrating India’s best tech startup leaders in the Silicon Valley of India.

“A founder is the sole of the company, but the CTO is the backbone of a startup,” said Anshuman Das, Co-founder and CEO, Longhouse Consulting, reflecting the importance of undisputed architects of India’s startup ecosystem.

Bringing together over 200 of India’s top CTOs, Chief Product Officers, Chief Data Officers, CISOs, and other senior tech and product leaders under one umbrella, the India Tech Leaders Conclave 2024 not only provided tech leaders with a stage to share their journeys and insights but also provided them with a podium to collectively envision the next five years of technological advancements and innovations in India.

The awards highlighted tech leaders based on a comprehensive set of criteria, including but not limited to the number of years in a CTO role, impact on business growth, innovation, intellectual property contributions, leadership, mentorship, functional responsibilities, and more. 

Here’s the 22 leaders whose contributions to furthering innovation were honoured at India’s CTO Excellence Awards 2024: 

• Jeyandran Venugopal, CPTO, Flipkart: With over two decades of experience across Yahoo, Amazon and Myntra, Venugopal’s visionary leadership continues to shape the future of ecommerce in India. He has integrated advanced technologies to enhance various aspects of Flipkart’s operations, including AI-powered product recommendations, voice search, vernacular language interfaces, and voice assistants (including Flippi).

• Phanimohan Kalagara, CTO, PineLabs: With over two decades of experience across ecommerce (Flipkart), fintech (PayPal) and CAD/CAM industries, Kalagara is leading tech innovation, enhancing PineLabs’s merchant commerce solutions across Asia. His expertise spans virtual reality and predictive analytics, which he has successfully integrated into various products and services throughout his career.

• Ajit Narayanan, CPTO, Licious: Narayanan has been pivotal in building and scaling digital products across ecommerce, healthcare, mobile and AI domains. At Licious, he is leading the transformation of the brand and its consumer experience through technology-driven innovations. Earlier, Narayanan served as the founding member and CTO at MFine, as the CTO at Myntra; and has also invented numerous patents. 

• Paranth Thiruvengadam, Site Leader and Head of Engineering, Atlassian: With experiences across ClearTax, MedLife, Yahoo, IBM Labs, and Walmart Labs, Thiruvengadam is overseeing a 1,700-strong workforce at Atlassian, at present, driving customer-centric IT service management solutions. 

• Sanjay Mohan, Group CTO, MakeMyTrip: With over three decades of experience, Mohan has a proven track record of bringing a strong platform mindset to all organisational functions. At MakeMyTrip, he leads the company’s technological innovation and AI-driven strategies, leading the group’s product and technology strategy, planning and execution. Mohan has also been instrumental in implementing generative AI for personalised travel planning, integrating voice, and conversational interfaces to enhance accessibility for users, including those in regional languages. 

• Shamik Sharma, SVP Engineering, Atlassian: Sharma’s expertise spans ecommerce, digital media, social networks, enterprise software, as well as consumer electronics. Before Atlassian, Sharma scaled organisations and processes—from small founding teams to large, specialised teams. He co-founded CureFit, driving technological innovations in health and fitness. Under his leadership, CureFit pivoted from physical fitness centres to a digital-first approach, helping the platform onboard 1.5 million new users during the pandemic. 

• Sanjay Suri, Former CTO and CPO, Nykaa: Suri joined Nykaa in 2016, driving the company’s technological advancements and product innovations, taking the brand from an early-stage startup to IPO. Suri has also pioneered new initiatives—Nykaa Fashion and Nykaa Man brands—through its website and app. Prior to Nykaa, he worked as the CTO at Tradus. 

• Raghu Krishnananda, CPTO, Myntra: With a rich background in leading large-scale technological innovations, Krishnananda has been instrumental in leveraging technology to enhance customer shopping experience at Myntra. Before Myntra, he worked at Samsung Research Institute as the Head of Service Platforms, leading the design and development of personalisation and monetisation platforms, mobile payments, digital lending and entertainment services. 

• Suvonil Chatterjee, CPTO, Ola Electric: Chatterjee plays a crucial role in steering Ola Electric’s product and technology strategies. Joining Ola in 2016, Chaterjee has overseen projects that leverage AI and ML to improve customer service and operational efficiency. Before Ola, he was the Head of Design at Flipkart, instrumental in enhancing user experience and design innovation. Chaterjee’s career transition from design to a leadership role in product management and engineering is a testament to his versatile expertise and ability to adapt to evolving technological landscapes. 

• Satish Mani, CTO, Flights, MakeMyTrip: Mani has been instrumental in driving MakeMyTrip’s technological advancements, and maintaining its leadership in the online travel sector. With a background in engineering, Mani has earlier played a key role in developing and scaling the Cleartrip platform. 

• Giridhar Yasa, CTO, LendingKart: Yasa specialises in cloud architectures, large-scale distributed systems, virtualisation, and ecommerce systems. At LendingKart, he leads the company’s technological strategy and innovation, responsible for developing a scalable tech framework to enhance the platform for customers, channel partners and co-lending partners, to ensure minimal onboarding time and customisable workflows. 

• Pramod Jajoo, SVP Technology, Shipbob: After holding significant leadership roles in BigBasket and Flipkart, Jajoo is the Senior Vice President of Technology and Country Head for India at ShipBob, a leading global omni-fulfilment platform, at present.   

• Rahul Chari, Founder and CTO, PhonePe: Chari has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of digital payments in India. Prior to co-founding PhonePe, he played a pivotal role at Flipkart, building the entire tech stack for eKart. Chari also launched the first legal music download store in India, selling singles across almost all music labels in the country. 

• Akash Saxena, CPTO, Viacom: Saxena is a seasoned technology leader, earlier serving as the CTO at Disney+Hotstar, managing over 300 million monthly active users. 

• Amod Malviya, Co-founder and Engineer, Udaan: Malviya played a crucial role in revolutionising the B2B commerce space in India, contributing to and scaling the company’s engineering platforms. Earlier at Flipkart, he laid the groundwork for the company’s tech advancements, particularly in developing eKart. 

• Vishwanath Ramarao, CPTO, Acko: Ramarao leads the technology strategy, product development and design at Acko. He has delivered innovative and personalised insurance products at Acko, leveraging advanced technology, enhancing customer experience. 

• Amitabh Misra, CTO, Sprinklr: With over 25 years of experience in building large-scale platforms, Misra oversees the global research and development teams (including product and engineering) at Sprinklr. Prior to this, he worked with Snapdeal, before incepting GOFro.comm a travel startup that revolutionised the online travel booking experiences. 

• Mumu Pande, Global COO, Quor Group: Pande, is the Global COO at Quor Group (merged entity with Eka Software), spending over a decade spearheading the product development and engineering teams, driving significant innovations in the commodities sector. She has also been pivotal in launching new products and features that cater to the evolving needs of the commodity trading market. She has also been a strong advocate for gender inclusivity within the tech industry. 

• Dale Vaz, Founder and CEO, Aaritya: As the former CTO at Swiggy, Vaz has played a crucial role in transforming the online food ordering platform into an AI and ML-first organisation. During his tenure at Swiggy, Vaz led the development of Swiggy’s robust tech infrastructure, driving innovation across Swiggy Food, Swiggy Instamart, and other verticals, deploying over 140 AI models. Before Swiggy, he spent over a decade at Amazon, overseeing the development of consumer tech, payments engineering and mobile engineering. 

• Bapu Kota, CTO, VerSe Innovation (Dailyhunt): With a proven track record of building high-performing teams that focus on innovation, intellectual property and collaboration, Kota brings experience in starting and expanding product and technology organisations in Asia-Pacific markets.  

• Kailash Nadh, CTO, Zerodha: With over two decades of experience, Nadh has been pivotal in transforming Zerodha into a fintech powerhouse. His contributions include the development of Zerodha’s core trading platform, Kite. Under his leadership, Zerodha has adopted technologies like Flutter for mobile applications and Vue.js for the web. 

• Murali Brahmadesam, CTO, Razorpay: As the CTO and Head of Engineering at Razorpay, Brahmadesam oversees the company’s tech strategy and development. He has been instrumental in advancing the company’s engineering capabilities, leading an 800-member strong engineering team. Before Razorpay, Brahmadesam served as the Engineering Leader for Aurora Database Engines and Distributed Storage at AWS. 

(Disclaimer: Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, is an independent director in Ola Electric)