RAVI VENKATESAN, CHAIRMAN, MICROSOFT INDIA
Ravi Venkatesan, is an alumnus of the Indian Institue of Technology, Bombay, and Purdue University in the United States, joined Microsoft India in 2004. He is resposible for Microsoft's marketing, operational and business development efforts in India.
According to Microsoft India, Mr Venkatesan's role includes, working in partnership with the leaders of Microsoft's other business units, defining the company's relationship with policy makers, customers and business partners across Microsoft's six business units in India.
As chairman of Microsoft India, Ravi Venkatesan clarifies the nature of his key responsibility. His over-all responsibility is business development. He works closely together with Neelam Dhawan ,the managing director, who heads the Sales and Marketing Group, Microsoft India. They join hands with government and policy amkers and organisations like Nasscom and Ficci to raise awareness about the need for genuine software by launching the Windows Genuine Advantage online, and a single toll free number, 1600 111100 for all customer and partner support in India.
They also work with various organisations to suggest ways to strenghthen copyright laws and intellectual property rights, and patents for embedded software.
India has the laws but it needs to implement them vigorously.
The absence of vigorous enforcement is a mojor impediment to the growth of Independent Software Vendors in India.
Some government departments, both at the Centre and in the States, have been considering to use open source operating systems, as opposed to proprietary operating systems like Window of Microsoft.Mr Ravi Venkatesan feels that in some areas like the computer science departments of univeristies, open source is quite popular. But in commercial environments, customers usually take into account the cost of ownership, the ease of deployment and use before deciding on which OS or software to use.
Commercial software has the ability to create jobs in India, like it does in developed markets, unlike open-source-source which is based more on ideology.