N Chandrasekaran becomes Business Today's 'Business Icon of the Year'; Nandan Nilekani honoured with Lifetime Achievement award

Tata Group Chairman N Chandrasekaran won the ‘Business Icon of the Year’ award, while Infosys Co-founder and Chairman Nandan Nilekani was honoured with the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award at the Business Today-PwC India’s Best CEOs ranking.

The event was held as part of a 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. 

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 and CEO, Dalmia Bharat (cement); Praveer Sinha, CEO and MD, Tata Power (power); Sandeep Kumar Gupta, CMD, GAIL (oil and gas); Shashi Kiran Shetty, Founder and Chairman, Allcargo Group (Transport and Logistics); Sanjay Koul, CMD, Timken India (Auto and Auto Ancillaries); S Suresh, MD, EID Parry (Agriculture and Allied); Deepak C Mehta, CMD, Deepak Nitrite (Chemicals); Sajjan Bhajanka, Chairman, Century Plyboards (Industrials); Parmod Sagar, MD and CEO - India, RHI Magnesita (Consumer Goods); Suneeta Reddy, MD, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise (Pharma and 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 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 filters, the names of top three 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 and CEO, Increate Value Advisors; Mehul Pandya, MD and CEO, CARE Ratings; Mathew Cyriac, Executive Chairman, Florintree Advisors; and JN Gupta, Co-founder and 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 Chandrasekaran, Nilekani and 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 panel discussions involving corporate leaders.

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