Neel Paliwal, associate vice-president, IT, Delhi Inte­­grated Multi-Modal Transit Systems (DIMTS) Limited, is a business leader with a people-first approach to business. “Our goal is to deliver the best possible value to clients in the context of being able to create a personalised ex­­­­perience. Our teams consistently receive high satisfaction ratings from customers because they de­mo­ns­trate ownership and passion. Building win-win strategies with clients and with in­ter­­nal stakeholders has been the crux of our success,” says Paliwal.

“A number of state transport undertakings are trying to digitalise their operations and in the next three to five years, about 80 per cent of systems and processes will get digitalised.  The industry is already seeing some adoption of IoT in the sector,” he adds.

He has over 20 years of gl­obal IT experience in desi­g­n­i­ng, developing, implementi­ng and operating transformat­i­o­nal large-scale programs ac­r­oss technologies and busin­ess do­mains. As AVP-IT at DIMTS, a JV between the De­lhi government and the IDFC Foun­d­ation, he leads the BI/DW, fleet management, mo­­­bile and consulting practice.

Through a career spanning two decades, he has worked in various roles, from software development to IT leadership and management, undertaking project and program management. Prior to joining DIMTS, he worked in various IT leadership roles in Nagarro Inc, IBM, Oracle and HCL.  “During project as­sig­­nments in multiple cities across India, the UK, Europe, Singapore, USA and Japan, I received valuable exposure in managing delivery across multiple cultures and styles,” he says. The­re were several assig­nm­e­nts that were extremely cha­lle­n­­ging and professionally satisfying. One of them was a project that faced several issues such as delayed timelines, budget overruns and an unhappy clie­nt. He took over the project as a program manager and steer­ed it towards an exceptional delivery, which got his team an excellence award. The project used the latest tech­­no­logies and involved SOA in­te­gration of 18 different systems.

Paliwal says his biggest strengths are his trustworthiness and ability to build good relations, “though I can be im­patient at times,” he says. Pali­wal is a computer science graduate from Karnataka Un­i­ve­r­sity and a postgraduate from MDI, Gur­g­aon. He also has certifications from the Project Management Institute and the Information Techn­o­logy Infr­astructure Library. He spends his spare time relaxing with family or watching mov­ies. He is also a fitness enthusiast.