Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran was awarded the newly instituted Business Icon of the Year, while Infosys Co-founder and Chairman Nandan Nilekani was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement award at the BT-PwC India’s Best CEOs ranking at a glittering ceremony in Mumbai on Wednesday.
Chandrasekaran won top honours in a ranking that had 19 other winners, including Nilekani.
Union Minister for Civil Aviation and Steel Jyotiraditya Scindia honoured the 20 winners of India Inc at the event, which takes off from Business Today’s Best CEOs issue – an annual compendium of top leaders from various sectors who are leading from the front amid challenging times and geopolitical scenarios.
Scindia also unveiled Business Today’s Best CEOs special issue which profiled the winners belonging to three overall categories – Super Large (TV Narendran, CEO and MD, Tata Steel); Mid-sized (Ashish Bharat Ram, Chairman of SRF); and Emerging (A. Prathap Reddy, Chairman of Balaji Amines) — and across 15 sectors.
Sector-wise winners included Puneet Yadu Dalmia, MD & CEO, Dalmia Bharat (cement), Praveer Sinha, CEO & MD, Tata Power (power), Sandeep Kumar Gupta, CMD, GAIL (oil & gas), Shashi Kiran Shetty, Founder and Chairman, Allcargo Group (Transport & Logistics), Sanjay Koul, CMD, Timken India (Auto & Auto Ancillaries), S. Suresh, MD, EID Parry (Agriculture & Allied), Deepak C Mehta, CMD, Deepak Nitrite (Chemicals), Sajjan Bhajanka, Chairman, Century Plyboards (Industrials), Parmod Sagar, MD & CEO – India, RHI Magnesita (Consumer Goods), Suneeta Reddy, MD, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise (Pharma & Healthcare), Suresh Narayanan, CMD, Nestlé India (FMCG) and Dinesh Kumar Khara, Chairman, SBI (BFSI).
The winners were based on BT-PwC India’s Best CEOs ranking. The study used a robust methodology to assess the top 500 most valuable companies in the country by market capitalisation for growth in revenues, profits, EBITDA and total shareholder returns. After applying further stringent filters, the names of top 3 CEOs in each group – overall and sector-wise – were placed before the jury, who chose the final winners.
This year’s jury comprised Ajay Piramal, Chairman, Piramal Group (Jury Chair); Cyril Shroff, Managing Partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas; Milind Sarwate, Founder & CEO, Increate Value Advisors; Mehul Pandya, MD & CEO, CARE Ratings; Mathew Cyriac, Executive Chairman, Florintree Advisors; and J.N. Gupta, Co-founder & MD, Stakeholders Empowerment Services.
The awards ceremony was the highlight of the day-long BT MindRush programme, BT’s flagship annual conference. The programme saw several stars of corporate India such as N. Chandrasekaran, Nandan Nilekani and Piramal Group Chairman Ajay Piramal talk about the burning topics of the day. In addition, there were master classes from Swami Gaur Gopal Das and Prof. Saugata Ray of ISB, besides two stimulating panel discussions involving top corporate leaders such as Suresh Narayanan, CMD of Nestle India, Suneeta Reddy, MD of Apollo Hospitals, TV Narendran of Tata Steel, Praveer Sinha, CEO & MD of Tata Power, among others.
