Dr Vishad Rahangdale, Chief Information Officer, Electrotherm (India) Limited

Dr Vishad Rahangdale, chief information officer (CIO), Electrotherm, has 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He joined Electrotherm, a leading steel and engineering company, in 2009, at a time when the company was looking to digitally transform its operations. Over the years, he has been involved in strategic IT management, digital transformation, IT alignment with business operations, and the creation of new revenue stre­ams using IT. He is currently leading the second wave of digital transformation in the company, by exploring use cases for IoT and through the extensive use of analytics, CRM and mobility solutions. “The current wave of digitisation has made it easier for CIOs to convince traditional business organisations to tra­ns­form their infrastructure to a digital platform,” he notes.

In fact, he fondly remembers Project Convergence, which he undertook at Elec­tro­­therm, as his most memorable assignment. The project was aimed at consolidating the company’s business locations on a single platform, from perspectives such as communications, business transactions, material and logistics movement, compliance and IT mana­­gement. “It helped the organisation improve visibility, transparency and productivity, and connect the dots digitally,” he says. Prior to Electrotherm, Raha­ngdale worked with various firms across industries su­ch as metals and minerals, textiles, print media, swit­ch­gear, steel, capital goods manufacturing, construction, business consulting, non-conventional power and automobiles.

He believes that demonetisation and the Digital India programme have brought the telecom sector to the pivot of the revolution. According to him, “Last-mile connectivity is a matter of concern, but the pace at which it is picking up is remarkable. At Electro­therm, the demand for bandwidth has almost tripled in the past two years. The biggest challenge is data security, as all business-sensitive data is either lying static at an external body or floating in the network.” He adds that only those service provi­ders that have end-to-end multilayered security technologies deployed will be able to sustain operations.

Rahangdale has a Ph.D. in statistics and IT, and an M.Sc. in statistics with a specialisati­on in system analysis and operations res-earch. In his spare time, he likes to read, typically books on spirituality and philosophy, and spend time with his family, which includes his wife, Manju, and their son, Govindswaroop, who is pursuing his dreams in materials science and technology at IIT.