Name Ramesh Awtaney | ||
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Occupation Founder & Chairman, ISON Group | ||
Ahmadoff Dinner Reception | Mr. Ramesh Awtaney, iSON Group
Ramesh Awtaney is the Founder and Chairman of ISON Group, one of Africa’s largest IT and ITeS companies with a presence in almost 25 countries in Africa and over 8000 employees. As a serial entrepreneur with business interests spanning across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, Ramesh is also the Managing Director of Zamil Infra (ZI), a new age telco-grade solutions company with diverse offerings and capabilities which he formed as a joint venture with Middle East's Zamil Group.
Contents
- Ahmadoff Dinner Reception Mr Ramesh Awtaney iSON Group
- Early Life and Education
- Early career
- Entrepreneurial Journey
- Angel Investor and Mentor
- References
He also serves the board of several startups including like Athenta, mVentus and Safe ++.
As a seasoned MNC executive and technology leader with nearly two decades of experience in Telecommunications and IT, Ramesh has previously served global technology majors such as IBM, Ericsson, and ABB in ASEAN and APAC regions, where he pioneered high-value business models that had a lasting impact in transforming the telecom sector.
Achieving the distinct track record of contracting multi-billion dollars of business during his tenure with IBM, Mr. Awtaney also executed the path-breaking IBM-Bharti IT outsourcing deal on a revenue-share basis for the first time, which went on to become a benchmark for the industry. The telecom outsourcing arrangement is a Harvard Business case study that has been discussed globally in more than 50 boardrooms, and has also been referenced in the Global Strategies for Emerging Asia. Earlier at Ericsson, he managed sales and operations of all India GSM business.
Early Life and Education
Ramesh was born on 24 October 1966 in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India, to Mrs. Savitri Awtaney, and Mr. K.G. Awtaney, who worked at the Department of Telecommunications.
Ramesh did his Bachelors in Civil Engineering from M.B.M Engineering College in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, which is one of the oldest engineering colleges in India. He did his Executive MBA in International Trade from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.
He has also done several executive courses in management from Harvard, Wharton and INSEAD.
Ramesh relocated to Dubai in 2013-end and travels extensively. He is married to Anju since 23 years and has one son.
Early career
Ramesh started his career with SAE India, a part of the SAE Italy Group (which was later sold to ABB and currently owned by RPG). In a short period of two years, he was given the P&L responsibility of constructing a 100 km transmission line between Bhira and India’s largest slum, Dharavi. He bagged this project for SAE from Tata Electric. After successful completion of this project, he was made in-charge of all overseas business for SAE at a young age of 27 years, where he led the business expansion in Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Abu Dhabi and other markets.
After a brief stint in 2000 at Jain Networks, a start-up that set up India’s first Teleport, Ramesh joined IBM in 2001 to restart the telecom vertical. After having analyzed IBM’s services strength, he started building an outsourcing model which did not have an off-shoring element to it. Mr. Awtaney conceptualized and led the path-breaking, end-to-end IT outsourcing agreement Bharti Airtel and IBM. This was the first time that an Indian company (Airtel) had outsourced to a U.S. company (IBM). Som Mittal, then president of Nasscom termed this deal as, “the most sophisticated deal” that “taught the country what outsourcing is all about at a time when focus was on offshoring”.
By 2004, Ramesh had moved to ASEAN and then Asia Pacific (including Japan and India) role covering IBM’s telecom business with special focus on outsourcing. Later he moved to Singapore. Ramesh also led several outsourcing deals for IBM including Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Maxis Communications, Malaysia and others.
Entrepreneurial Journey
In late-2010, Ramesh envisioned that with Airtel acquiring Zain in Sub Saharan Africa, the telecom outsourcing models would move to Africa. Two different companies were formed as JVs focusing on IT services and BPO – while the IT Company was a JV with Mara Group of Africa, the BPO was a JV with Spanco of India. In the intervening years, ISON bought all shares of Spanco and rebranded the company as ISON BPO. The IT services are done under ISON Technologies .
In year 2012 Dhabi Holdings made investments in ISON Technologies and in 2013, Satya Capital made an investment in the holding company of ISON Technologies and ISON BPO.
In 2013, ISON embarked on a journey to create ISON 2.0 which would have employee strength of 40,000 by the year 2017 and a footprint across 35 Sub Saharan African countries and a full Middle East coverage. Currently, ISON Group has over 13000 employees and is spread across almost 30 countries with a complete onshore model.
Ramesh serves as the Founder and Chairman of ISON Group.
Angel Investor and Mentor
Mr. Awtaney serves on the Advisory Board of several startups including: