Harish Mehta awarded with the SKOCH CEO’s Choice Author of The Year Award

HarperCollins

is delighted to announce  

Harish Mehta awarded with the

 SKOCH CEO’s Choice Author of The Year Award

for his debut national bestseller

 ‘The Maverick Effect’

Commenting on the award and the event, author Harish Mehta said, “I am inclined to see this award as an endorsement of NASSCOM’s extraordinary model that brought together a unique value system pioneered by a collective of mavericks. Today the NASSCOM model, as captured in The Maverick Effect, is actively percolating through various industries & their associations including pharma, export and more, reinforcing its worth as an industry-agnostic blueprint to sustainable value creation. I’m glad to see that decades after its inception, NASSCOM’s unique values like ‘collaborate & compete’, ‘speaking in a single industry voice’, ‘keeping India-first’ and operating with ‘enlightened self-interest’ are finally shining in the spotlight they deserve. These values will serve as potent reminders of Indian IT’s unique value & people-led foundation, and their potential to transform any association, industry or individual that chooses to customize and personalize it for themselves”

Executive Editor, Sachin Sharma, says, “The SKOCH CEO’s Choice award is a testimony to story of India’s IT Revolution. The Maverick Effect has captured NASSCOM and it’s role in India’s growth like no other earlier books. For a publisher, this is a moment to cherish a deserving win.”

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ABOUT THE EVENT

The SKOCH CEO’s Choice Award jointly presented by the SKOCH Group and CEO’s Association for Inclusive India (CAII), was held in New Delhi on December 19, 2022 at the India Habitat Centre and saw a gathering of CEOs, CXOs and senior bureaucrats from across India. At the event SKOCH and CAII presented awards to some of India’s most outstanding corporate professionals, public servants and projects.

At the event Mr. Harish Mehta was felicitated with the ‘Author Of The Year’ Award for his debut book ‘The Maverick Effect’ that has become a National Bestseller across India within six months of its release. The award was presented by Mr. Kulmeet Bawa, MD, SAP India & President, CAII, Mr. Bibek Debroy, Chairman, PMEAC & Mr. Sameer Kochhar, Chairman SKOCH Group.

Commenting on the award Dr.  Gursharan Dhanjal, Vice Chairman of the SKOCH Group said,  “The Maverick Effect provides unique insights into the tireless efforts it took to set up NASSCOM”

Past awardees of SKOCH CEO’s Choice Awards include luminaries like Mr C.P. Gurnani, Mr Karan Bajwa, Mr Tanmay Chakrabarty, Mr Akhilesh Tuteja and others.

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

‘The customs officer told me that I needed to leave samples of what I was exporting with him. I was forced to leave the floppy disk of the software with him. The diligent officer immediately planted a stapler pin through the floppy disk and attached it to the form, thereby destroying the media and rendering it unreadable. For the longest time, everybody’s understanding of software differed immensely. This confusion continued into the 1980s, and it was getting challenging to grow the business. The more I met young software entrepreneurs, the more I realized that my frustration was not unique. Something had to be done.’

In the mid-1970s, a young, twenty-something man living an American dream threw away a lucrative job as a database manager and came back to India. At that time, India had no IT industry to speak of; computers were a novelty, and the nation was trapped in socio-economic backwardness and a labyrinthine License Raj.

As young Harish Mehta struggled to find his stride, he realized that India’s nascent and fragmented IT industry acutely needed a unified voice that could speak to the government, change laws and harness the country’s potential. In an unlikely alliance of headstrong and competing young professionals, he united other IT entrepreneurs to envision a world-beating association that would revolutionize Indian IT: NASSCOM.

The Maverick Effect is the extraordinary story of this band of dreamers who joined hands to transform a nation while also changing the lens through which the world looked at India. Valued at a staggering $200 billion today, the Indian

IT industry directly employs more than four million people. It is the largest forex earner and has helped millions of Indians beat poverty and rise to the middle-income group. Honest, open and inspiring, Harish Mehta’s journey proves that no vision is impossible if unrelenting, kindred spirits unite.

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For more information, please contact Vandana Rathore at
vandana.rathore@harpercollins.co.in