Leadership

Dr. Raju Indukuri, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, US Operations

Dr. Raju Indukuri is the driving force behind Ignis group and is responsible for building the company into a multi-million dollar technology services organization. He firmly believes that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things. An accomplished medical practitioner and entrepreneur, his vision, zeal and personal interest in technology solutions has helped in making Ignis a force to reckon with. Over the past decade, he has built highly charged teams of talented individuals. Along with building Ignis, he has also co-founded and led two other successful IT services companies. Under his leadership, Ignis has earned a number of international, national and regional achievement awards. These include multiple rankings in the Inc. 500, Dallas Morning News, and "Top 50" largest Minority owned companies.

M K Govind, Chief Executive Officer, India Operations

Mr. Govind brings with him an illustrious career of 35 years where he has had rich and wide experience encompassing design, development, quality, commercial and management functions in various industries. He was instrumental and sphere headed many Indian Aircraft design and development programs like HF-24, Ajeet, AJT-16, AJT-36 and LCA, which are a matter of pride for Indian Aviation. During his leadership role at BaeHAL, he forged a relationship with Airbus and delivered many complicated software programs for different series of Airbus fleet. During this tenure he along with his team developed sophisticated software which was used by PLSV (space craft made by ISRO).

His previous responsibilities were as a General Manager for Aircraft Research & Design Center, HAL, Project Director (Integration) for ADA, Chief Executive Officer for BAeHAL Software Ltd (A Joint Venture of BAE SYSTEMS and HAL), Vice President (International Operations) for  Macmet Technologies and as a Principal Consultant for Infosys Technologies Ltd.

Mr. Govind holds an M Sc (Engineering) from Cranfield Institute of Technology, Bedford, UK, a BE from Viswesvariah College of Engineering, Bangalore, Karnataka. He is also a graduate, Aeronautical Society of India and a Graduate, Institution of Electronics & Telecom Engineers
of India.

Nihar Ranjan Samantara, Founder and Chief Operating Officer

Nihar has over 21 years of experience in public sector and IT companies where he has held leadership positions in corporate strategy, growth, ongoing operations and technology implementation. As a Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Ignis, he is responsible for India & USA Operations, Business Development and Global Delivery.

Nihar has a proven track record of building companies from ground up and attaining extraordinary results. One such company was Majoris Systems where he was a founder member. Majoris started with $50,000 in revenues and 10 employees and grew into a company with over 350+ employees with annual revenues of $9 Million in the span of 4 years. Subsequent to Majoris, Nihar was a Director and Vice President for Valtech, a French consulting company. His earlier responsibilities included companies like BFL Software, Trigent Software and Ashok Leyland Information Technology (ALIT).

Nihar was instrumental in setting up dedicated offshore development centers (ODC) for fortune 500 companies like GE, ABN AMRO, ING, FedEx, AutoZone, Beverly, Pegasus, Home Depot, LV,  Thales, WCM, Proliant to name a few. Nihar holds an ME from MIT, Anna University, India

Prahalad Agiwal, Chief Financial Officer

Prahalad Agiwal (Agiwal) has nearly 3 decades experience in Finance, Commercial, Corporate Planning and Systems functions in leading IT and Software services companies. Prior to joining Ignis, Agiwal was a promoter and chief financial officer of Majoris Systems (P) Ltd. (subsequently Valtech India Systems (P) Ltd.), a Bangalore, India based software development company). Agiwal also led the CRM and ERP practice there.

Agiwal has served as Business Head-ERP Consulting Services in BFL Software Ltd. The responsibilities included setting up PeopleSoft Consulting Practice as an independent profit center in addition to in-house implementation of the same. During his 15 plus years tenure at Wipro, Agiwal successfully implemented company’s diversification in to Computer Peripherals and it’s spurning in to a separate independent division and subsequently in to a company. As Head of Corporate Planning, Agiwal led strategic relationship discussions with global majors culminating in to joint ventures with Acer and British Telecom.

Agiwal holds a Bachelor’s degree in Metallurgical Engineering with Honors from University of Rajasthan, India and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) from Indian Institute Of Management, Ahmedabad, India. Agiwal had been Guest Faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and Visiting faculty member at several management institutes viz. TASMAC, IFIM, ICFAI, ITM, Mount Carmel, Goa Institute of Management Studies etc.

Raj V. Gopal, Vice President – Sales & Marketing

Raj is a seasoned sales & marketing professional with more than a decade of experience in the IT industry. He has handled various role functions that include corporate strategy, business development, marketing, account management and pre sales. He has worked in multiple geographies that include USA, Europe Middle East and Asia Pacific (India, Hong Kong, Singapore) and brings with him a proven track record in building, nurturing and managing multi million dollar customers. He has a sound knowledge of the global sourcing market place, project execution Models and SDLC methodologies (both traditional & iterative).

Raj has worked with diverse, globally distributed teams to successfully sell complex software solutions and has been a top percentile performer through his career span so far. In his current responsibility, he has a mandate to build a customer focused sales & marketing team at Ignis Technology Solutions and drive revenues in line with the organizational goals.

Raj holds a Bachelors Degree in Telecommunications Engineering and an MBA in Marketing & Information Systems.

Dhananjaya (Ram) Rayudu, Vice President – Customer Relations

Dhananjaya (Ram) Rayudu has over 12 years of IT industry experience in Operations, Software Delivery & Program Management. He has a responsibility for managing US operations and customer relationships for offshore delivery.

Ram is a seasoned professional with rich technology outsourcing experience. He comes to Ignis from Valtech Technologies and Majoris Systems where he played a pivotal role in setting up the IBM Group operations and also program managed a very large ODC. He was instrumental in setting up a process for Onsite offshore interactions and software delivery. In his earlier tenures, he has held multiple responsibilities that include Project Delivery, Business Development, and Managing Client Relationships.

Ram holds his Degree in Electrical Engineering from Bangalore University, Karnataka, India.

Dinabandhu Behera, Vice President – Aerospace & Quality

Dinabandhu Behera (Behera) is responsible for managing design, development and testing of aerospace applications. He also has an additional responsibility to drive the Quality Practices for Ignis. Behera comes with rich experience of over 20 years in the Avionics & Software industries serving premier companies such as Hindustan Aeronautics Limited- HAL, IBM India, BAeHAL and Valtech Systems India Limited.

He started his career with India’s Light Combat program of HAL as an Assistant Engineer (Design) and worked there for around 8 years from its Project Definition Phase to Design and Development of Avionics system of the aircraft. Subsequently, he worked for nearly 4 years in BAeHAL (a Joint venture of HAL and BAe System for developing airborne software) and another 5 years with IBM. His association with IBM and Valtech enriched his experience in Software Design and Development, Verification and Validation, Project Management, ISO and CMM Process, Delivery and Client interaction.

Behera has been instrumental in implementing ISO 9001: 2000 certification for the organization He has very good experience in DO 178B process implementation and Training apart from his experience in project management and delivery of projects. Behera has graduated from University College of Engineering, Bural, Sambalpur University of Orissa in Electrical Engineering.