Ashok Bakthavathsalam

Dr. Ashok had a few years' stints at Cellnet Schlumberger and Hewlett Packard in the USA and returned to the motherland (India) to set up the mighty software company in Coimbatore, i.e. KGISL, which is a 'Pride of Coimbatore', employing thousands of software professionals.

Dr. Ashok has been instrumental in setting up a 'Special Economic Zone' (SEZ) in Coimbatore to cater to the needs of IT majors. Multinational companies like Robert Bosch, Cognizant Technology Solutions, and Dell have set up their production and operational facilities in this SEZ.

Dr. Ashok is a Member of Task Force in Information Technology and has been taking active interest in the affairs of CII and doing everything possible to put Coimbatore in the IT map of India. His pioneering efforts have now resulted in more and more IT companies setting up their bases in Coimbatore.

Dr. Ashok had his engineering education (Computer Science) from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, and obtained an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University, New York. Giving back to the society is uppermost in Dr. Ashok's mind as is evident by over 1,10,000 free eye surgeries done in the eye hospital and performing over 1,000 free heart surgeries for the poor.