39th Annual Meeting

Kiran Karnik
 

KIRAN KARNIK is president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), the trade body of the IT software and services industry in India. His key function is to build global brand equity for the Indian software and service industry. Before joining NASSCOM in 2001, he was managing director at Discovery Networks in India where he spearheaded the launch of the Discovery Channel in South Asia in 1995 and Animal Planet in 1999. He worked for over 20 years at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), where he held various positions, including a founder-director of ISRO’s Development and Educational Communicational Unit. In 1991, he joined the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) as its first director. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister, the Central Advisory Board on Education, and the Information, Communication and Entertainment Committee (ICE) set up by the Prime Minister’s Office. He is involved with a number of non-government organizations (NGOs), and is currently chairman of the National Foundation of India. He is also on the board of a number of educational institutions, including IIT-Kharagpur. He regularly contributes to publications and has authored or edited many publications. He has a post-graduate degree from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, and an honors degree in physics from Bombay University, India.