Neelam Dhawan: Person of the Year

Corporate sector has to walk in step with the government to achieve inclusive growth. It requires new business models and use of technology where sustainability and social responsibility do not work at cross-purposes. Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director of Microsoft India, starting with the legendary PC price wars in the nineties, has been leveraging technology, helping localize it and making it available at affordable price points to encompass an increasing base of Indians who are today at the right side of digital divide. At Microsoft she has been steering paradigms like Saksham, and Shisksha. While project Saksham is enabling establishment of 50,000 kiosks across rural India to provide education, financial and other services, project Shiksha is delivering computer literacy to 200,000 government school teachers and nearly 1 million children. Neelam is passionately committed to the cause of Small and Medium Enterprises. She has contributed to Project Vikas, which is a scalable five year action plan designed to enhance the competitiveness of India’s SME sector, encompassing skill and capacity building, knowledge creation and dissemination, and enablement of linkages in a cluster ecosystem. She hopes to create internal efficiencies through increased ICT absorption in a gradual manner thereby reducing operational and transactional costs. May her tribe increase!