Downtime

Arvind Tawde

Title: Senior VP and Chief Information Officer

Company: Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.

Annual Revenue: Rs.13238.0 crore for 2007-08

Industry Vertical: Manufacturing

Time in job: 35 years-8 years in IT

Your First Job: Precision Fasteners Ltd.

Best IT decision you ever made: Consolidating IT infrastructure-communication network, data center and ERP

Most significant IT implementation: End-to-end demand chain management through SAP SCM

Upcoming technologies at Mahindra & Mahindra: SOA, Web 2.0, Unified Communications, MES

Biggest challenge in your Industry: Change management and management of expectations-certainly not limited to manufacturing industry

Secret to meet this challenge: Reaching your customer segments with the right communication strategy

One quality every leader must possess: Listen

Technology you cant live without: Communication-Internet, E-mail

What would you like to be in the future: Continue to be a learner

Favorite Hobbies: Reading, Listening to music

Your most cherished moment: Smile on my father's face when I graduated in engineering with first class

Your obsession: Perfection in whatever I do

One thing you want to change in yourself: Being too soft

One thing you would never want to change in yourself: Integrity

The person who has inspired you most: My father

The best values you have imbibed from him: Be a learner at every stage of your life

Favorite book: The art of profitability by Adrian Slywotzky

Favorite movie: All movies of Dilip Kumar

A piece of advice to fellow CIOs: Think business, innovate, network and collaborate

- Mexy Xavier