-Samrita B
The CIO Club of Gujarat is a 12 years old organization with a not-for-profit vision. Founded in 2010 and formed initially by 25 CIOs, the club has seen its expansion over the years having currently more than 200 members across the state of Gujarat. The club has been formed to provide a forum for discussions, knowledge sharing and experiences and is recognized by the government of Gujarat.
Governed by a body of governing board members, the club conducts regular discourses to discuss on latest technologies and enhancement of their expertise to be able to master the tools and new technologies. The objective of the club is to nurture the professional growth of its CIO members and to help them emerge as leaders by sharing IT best practices and knowledge about the industry.
“We always had this thought in mind to have our own CIO club in Gujarat someday. It was not late before we decided to have one after understanding the importance and influence of having a CIO club,” Sandip Shah – Partner – Technology & ERP at Baker Tilly. “As the CIO role transformed to that of a business strategist, the need was felt to have a CIO club in Gujarat. With the rapid pace of technology advancement, it also becomes important for the CIO to continually refresh his knowledge and fine-tune skills in order to remain effective,” explains Sandip.
More than a decade old now, the Club has representation of CIOs from different industries like pharma, manufacturing, real estate, FMCG, and engineering across different cities of Gujarat. Many senior names and technocrats from the state are part of it that give due weightage to the credibility of the club.
“The club is all about the IT user coming together to discuss about the upcoming trends and
technologies,” says Jayesh Tank – Head IT, Harsha Engineers. “It is about having a common platform where vendors can come and talk about their products, the challenges they find while supplying products, or even discussing about the problems related to implementation of ERP, and cloud
computing.”
He further continues, “With growing operational and strategic importance of IT, the role of the CIO is undergoing a transformation. Even as the business relevance of IT which involves
both operationally and strategically has grown, today’s CIO has a much larger role to play.”
“With Gujarat becoming an important business hub and having recognized the importance of Gujarat in the IT map of India, the existence of such a club will not help uplift the morale of the CIOs, but we believe we will also continue to evolve as a technocrat. I feel the need to connect the CIO community from this western belt is very important,” says Jignesh Parekh – Head IT – Ratnamani Metals.
The CIO Club of Gujarat has also conducted several knowledge sharing events in the past. “Since we are recognized by the Govt. of Gujarat, we have had the privilege of being the Knowledge Partners for a lot of government events in the state like Digital Management Conclave, an event conducted by the GESIA IT Association and the Supporting organization for ET Cloud Summit. We are going to be the Knowledge Partner for the soon to be held GESIA Annual Awards 2022,” says Somesh Jha, Head IT – Capital Foods.
Future roadmap
The club would carry on with its work of publishing whitepapers on Technology trends, awarding the best performing CIOs and providing assistance to aspirational CIOs for their career guidance.
“We would also work closely with the Govt. education department for framing syllabus for IT students.
We would also continue to be the Knowledge partner with leading organizations like GESIA, FICCI, Chamber of Commerce, Nasscom, while also publishing frameworks like Data Privacy, Data localization, and Zero trust network,” says Jayesh Tank.
The club also offers free virtual CIO services to smaller organization who can’t afford fulltime CIO. It also becomes the mouthpiece or the truth of voice against leading OEMs, SIs, COTS (commercially available off-the-shelf) product companies etc.
The present Governing Board members of the CIO Club of Gujarat include –
- Sandip Shah – Partner – Technology & ERP at Baker Tilly ( One of the Top 10 accounting firm in the world having presence in 140+ countries)
- Jayesh Tank – Head IT , Harsha Engineers
- Jignesh Parekh – Head IT – Ratnamani Metals
- Dharmendra Gohel – Head IT- Meghmani
- Nilay Shah – Head IT – Navnit Publications
- Somesh Jha- Head IT – Capital Foods
- Nikhil Shah- Head IT – Omega Elevators
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