AT
The Times of India, Bangalore, I had been in the forefront of
generating a number of ideas, planning and implementing them along
with my other team mates for the entire newspaper’s IT content.
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I had handled the
co-ordination of the IT bureau.
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The TOI had a dedicated page
for technology called Cutting Edge where technology related
articles appear and I had been a leading contributor for the
success of this page, which is extremely popular among IT
community. ( Earlier, it was called Silicon Notes).
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The TOI group
used to come out with a quarterly technology magazine,
B-Drive, whose audience is the CXOs in large enterprises.
Here, I was instrumental in working out the layout of the magazine
along with generating the topics in the five sections of the
magazine. The responsibility also involved writing cover stories
as well as overall co-ordination – not only with other writers but
also the design team.
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Whenever the group had
to come out with supplements including Ascent (which
is on employment opportunities and HR) , I was responsible for
providing the content matrix for them – be it on technology,
business or HR- related topics whenever required.
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For the online
edition, I had been one of the few journalists whose stories have
been constantly flashed on the website’s home page.
During
this period, I had the opportunity of interviewing some of the
global CEOs of large corporates including Bill Gates, Scott
McNealy, Craig Barrett, Larry Ellison, Tom Engibous, David Filo,
(Yahoo co-founder) as well as a number of visiting dignitaries like
the ambassador the state of Washington and British UK Minister for
Trade and Commerce among others and the Russian ICT minister.
Among the
leading Indian software houses I have been constantly interacting
with, Infosys Chairman Narayana Murthy, Infosys CEO, Nandan
Nilekani, Wipro chief, Azim Premji, TCS’ S. Ramadorai, HCL’s head,
Shiv Nadar, Ramalinga Raju of Satyam are some of the people I
interact with on a continuous basis.
Some of
the breaking news stories which I have been acclaimed for :
Qualcomm picking up stake in Reliance, Discontent in Infosys and
Wipro( which led to a spurt of articles in the print media as well
as the electronic), hardware tech park coming up in Bangalore and a
number of other stories (linking technology and software leaders
which have appeared the front page of TOI) both in Bangalore as well
in national editions.
Apart from
pure-play tech stories, human interest features (where
technology plays a key role) have also been written by me. Stories
like HP’s effort in introducing e-literacy programmes and how
cellular base stations employee inexperienced youth to align base
stations, copyright infringements, schools (student database) going
for automation, among others have also appeared on front page in
TOI.
Previous
Experience
Oct. 1996-
1999: Principal correspondent, Plus Channel, a
leading electronic media TV broadcast company.
Here, I
was anchoring business and stories from Chennai for the Business
Plus daily morning show on the national Doordarshan (DD) network. I
was responsible for both news and feature broadcast for this show
aired from Mumbai.
As part of
this, there were independent major features (especially at a time
when Jayalalithaa, the Tamil Nadu chief minister was all-powerful –
but started going through a roller coaster ride because of her
arrests and imprisonment) and custodial deaths stories from Chennai.
Later, I
was assigned the job of building up of the southern bureau from
Bangalore and its editorial
consolidation.
July 94 -
96 : Senior copy editor cum correspondent, The Economic Times,
Chennai
My beat
revolved more around business than IT. This was a time when IT in
India was not too much in
the limelight but was just beginning to take on a shape that would
dwarf the rest of the global players. But this was a time that I had
started working on IT trends as part of my business beat.
Sept.
91 to 94:
Started out as a sub-editor-cum-reporter in the Financial
Express, Chennai, part of the Indian Express group of newspapers,
which at that time was the leading financial newspaper. During my
three-year stint in FE, I was appointed as the
feature-editor-cum- correspondent where in-depth features,
mostly centering around business were regularly handled by
me.