Prodyut Bora

Life and education

Bora was born in Jorhat, Assam on 10 April 1974 to Lakshmi Prova Bora, a school teacher and Lakshmi Kanta Bora, an accountant with the Assam government.

After completing his primary schooling from St Mary's School, North Lakhimpur, and Carmel School, Jorhat, he moved to the Rashtriya Indian Military College (RIMC), Dehradun, Delhi Public School (DPS), Noida, and St Stephen’s College (SSC), Delhi, where he completed his undergraduate level in English Literature. Thereafter he attended the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. He has also attended the London School of Economics (LSE) as a Chevening Gurukul Scholar, and the Yale University as a Yale World Fellow.

Professional career

After completing his undergraduate studies, Bora held his first job as a trainee at Asia Pacific Communication Associates, a company formed by a group of senior editors that walked out of The Times of India. Here he worked on Biblio: A Review of Books, a literary and book-review journal. He started his post-MBA career as a management consultant with Hewitt Associates. Thereafter he went on to become the Vice President (Business Development) of Digital Talkies, India’s first digital filmmaking company. He later joined Ashoka (non-profit organization) in its New Delhi office.

Political career

In 2004 Bora started his political career in a support function, his first assignment being a Member of BJP's National Media Cell, the party’s in-house communication and public relations unit.

National Convenor, IT Cell (2007-09)

Thereafter, in 2007, he was elevated and appointed the National Convenor of BJP's Information Technology (IT) Cell. The IT Cell was BJP’s newest organisational unit, and Bora was its first head. The IT Cell had 3 roles: (a) automate the Party organisation; (b) attract IT professionals to the Party; and (c) advise the Party on IT Policy issues. With that mandate, Prodyut set up cells in 22 states across the country. He also automated the party using ‘open source’ software. It was an innovative experiment to create an entire organisational IT ecosystem using free and open source software, and his efforts became the subject of a case study by Linux magazine.

In November 2008, Bora was selected to run the communications office of BJP’s Prime Ministerial Candidate for the 2009 Lok Sabha Elections, LK Advani. He designed and launched the campaign website of Advani, and very soon it became one of India’s most visited websites with an average of 3 million page views per month.

As a part of the 2009 campaign team, he was also instrumental in producing BJP’s IT Vision document.

State General Secretary (2010-12)

In January 2010, Bora moved to Assam to take charge as State General Secretary of BJP’s Assam unit. In the 2011 elections to the state legislature, he was pitted by his party to stand against Himanta Biswa Sarma, two-time legislator and minister, in the Jalukbari assembly constituency. Although he lost, Prodyut more than quadrupled his party’s vote share.

National Executive Member (2013- )

In April 2013, Bora was appointed a member of BJP National Executive Committee (NEC).

Awards and Recognitions

Bora has received the following awards:

2013: Selected Yale World Fellow by Yale University

2012: Awarded Chevening Gurukul Scholarship by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, UK

2010: Nominated Asia 21 Young Leader by Asia Society

2010: Invited to the Young Leaders Conference, Genoa, Italy, by The Council for the United States and Italy

2008: Voted among India's top 100 CIOs (Chief Information Officers) by CIO magazine