Nihar Ranjan Samantara, Founder and Chief Executive 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 Executive Officer (CEO) for Ignis, Nihar’s mandate is to drive organization growth, implement new business strategies, make Ignis a successful and trusted brand as well a preferred vendor of choice for its customers.

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.

Krishna Chandra Swain, Chief Technology Officer

Krishna has more than 15 years of experience in the field of IT Engineering, Program and Project management and has built highly proficient and effectual software products for many IT Services and Research organizations.

As Chief Technology Officer of Ignis, Krishna’s role is to assure the successful execution of the company’s business mission through development and deployment of state-of-the-art technology directions. He evaluates and identifies technology trends and platforms that may support or impede the success of business in Ignis and leads strategic planning to achieve business goals; by establishing governance processes of direction and control to ensure that objectives are achieved, risks are managed appropriately and the organization’s resources are used responsibly.

Krishna is constantly looking out for contributions that technology can make to the competitive advantage of the company and has the primary responsibility of contributing to the strategic direction of the company by identifying the role that specific technologies will play in its future growth.

Krishna has an excellent track record of building teams from ground zero and has achieved business goals through these highly effective and efficient teams. There are innumerable success stories of Krishna’s ability to deliver technically challenging projects and build software products for global organizations like Mphasis BFL, Majoris Software, Oracle India and Eka Software Pvt. Ltd. Prior to joining Ignis, he was responsible for managing the engineering division at Eka Software as Vice President-Product Engineering. During his bright career, Krishna has built and managed many large development teams who have successfully delivered projects on cutting edge technology platforms and with very high performance measures. Krishna has also been instrumental in setting up Offshore Development Centers (ODC) for fortune 500 companies such as ABN AMRO, FEDEX and SMBC in the recent past.

Krishna holds a Masters Degree from the IIT-Kharagpur and motivates himself by playing Chess.

M K Govind, Executive Vice President - Aerospace

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 relationship with many tier-1 suppliers to Airbus and delivered complicated software programs for different series of Airbus fleet. During this tenure he along with his team developed some sophisticated software for 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.

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.

Chandan Ray, Chief Operating Officer

Chandan has spent more than 2 decades imparting IT initiatives in culturally diverse organizations within India and overseas and has a deep understanding of best practices in delivering software products and services from India. He has played key leadership roles in the various fields of software development, setting up of engineering operations and building state-of-the-art products in various domains.

In his present role as Chief Operating Officer for IGNIS, he is responsible for corporate strategy, organizational growth; bring out operational excellence to the ongoing operations and technology implementation.

Chandan has a background of working with both startups and well-established organizations and concluding large-scale projects in various domains. As the former Vice President at MphasiS (An EDS Company), he was responsible for setting up and managing offshore development centers for several enterprise software product and services companies that delivered value for domains covering the spectrum of supply-chain management, financial systems, distribution & merchandising, warehouse and inventory management, airport automation, gaming and advertising managing.

He holds a Masters degree in Computer Applications and possesses a strong background in design, development and implementation of software solutions. During his corporate years he has worked with many large enterprises and corporations like IBM, Hewlett Packard, CSC, EDS and so on.

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.

Hara Prasad Mohapatra, General Manager - Delivery

Hara has eleven years of experience in IT industry. He has extensive knowledge of Mainframe technologies including COBOL, DB2, SQL, TSO, CICS, SDF2, XPEDITOR, FILE-AID, VSAM & ENDEVOR and has also worked on IMS and IDMS. He has held managerial positions and successful led delivery efforts.

His expertise and business domain knowledge are in areas such as Logistics, Finance & Banking, Retail and Credit Card processing. In his last assignment at Valtech as a project Manager he was mainly involved in project management for “The Home Depot” project. He was managing a team of eighteen mainframe professionals and was involved in project management, giving technical guidance to his team members and helping onsite account manager for smooth delivery of modules. He prepared all the quality documents as per the process defined by the quality team.

Hara is well-respected for his ability to manage offshore teams and has very good appreciation throughout his tenure for overall delivery responsibilities.

Ravindra Bodhe, Vice President - Delivery

Ravindra has over 20 years of experience in engineering, project management and group management in the IT products, services and research organizations. As head of Open systems he is responsible for project delivery, Process compliance and customer relations.

Ravindra has track record of building teams from grounds up and achieving business goals through the teams. He has successfully built project execution groups at Yojna Systems, MPhasis BFL software ltd, and Intel India. He has managed organizations research and development teams and has developed competent teams to perform cutting edge technology work. Ravindra has been instrumental in setting up Offshore Development Centers (ODC) for fortune 500 companies such as NEC, and Compaq Computer Corporation.

Ravindra holds Masters Degree in Computer Science from the IIT-Mumbai and holds a certificate in General Management from the IIM-Bangalore.

A Mohan, Executive Director

Mr. A. Mohan joined the erstwhile Aircraft Design Bureau (presently known as ARDC) of HAL as Design Trainee in June, 1971. A Mechanical engineering graduate from REC Tiruchi, he was trained in the various manufacturing divisions of HAL and in the Aerospace Department of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore during 1971–72.

Mr. A. Mohan has worked in trainer and fighter aircraft programs of HAL like Kiran, HPT-32, Basant, IJT and LCA. In 1979 he was inducted into a group called Design Programmes (Composites) which initiated experimental programmes for aircraft structures using composite materials, laying the foundation for application in LCA project. In 1990, he was deputed to The National Team (CFC Wing) of LCA.

His specialization includes structural design of aircraft wing and empennage using metallic and composite materials, aircraft configuration development, CAD and project management. In August 2005 he became Chief Designer (Structures) and in Jan 2006, he was elevated as General Manager, ARDC, and the design house for the development of the fixed wing aircraft of HAL.

Sanjay Choudhury , Vice President- USA operations

Sanjay Choudhury is the Vice President of Ignis, USA operations with complete responsibility for all aspects of this business. In addition to his operational responsibility, Sanjay also leads the sales and client relationship services for all business lines of Ignis in the Americas region.

With about 17 years of experience in the Information Technology Solutions and Outsourcing space, Sanjay has a unique mix of experience and knowledge in a wide range of industries, operating across multiple geographies both in entrepreneurial and large global organizations. A major part of his work experience has been across financial services industries in the United States.

His career started with Total System Services (TSYS), Inc., an Atlanta based software company focused mainly on various Card Transacting solutions and here Sanjay had experience on working for end-to-end solutions using the world famous TS2 product. Subsequent to this, he joined EDS/MphasiS and was instrumental in building and enhancing client relationships and setting up of Offshore Development Centre for many Fortune 100 companies like JP Morgan Chase and GE Money.

Sanjay has a Master’s Degree in Engineering and lives in the United States at Columbus, Georgia with his wife and two little daughters.