BT Mindrush 2023: N Chandrasekaran is 'Business Icon of the Year', Nandan Nilekani wins Lifetime Achievement award

Tata Group Chairman N Chandrasekaran was awarded the newly instituted 'Business Icon of the Year', while Infosys co-founder and Chairman Nandan Nilekani was honoured with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement award at BT Mindrush 2023 based on BT-PwC India’s Best CEO ranking at Taj Lands End Hotel in Mumbai on Wednesday. 

Chief Guest and Union Minister for Civil Aviation and Steel Jyotiraditya Scindia honoured the two stalwarts 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 who are leading from the front amid challenging times and geopolitical scenarios.  

He also unveiled Business Today's Best CEOs special issue which profiled winners belonging to three categories – Super Large (total income of Rs 1 lakh crore-plus); Mid-sized (Rs 10,000-50,000 crore); Emerging (Rs 1,000-10,000 crore) — and across 15 sectors such as automobiles, BFSI, consumer goods, transport & logistics and textile & apparel. 

Under the Super Large category, the minister presented the award to TV Narendran, CEO and MD, Tata Steel.  

Sector-wise winners included Puneet Yadu Dalmia, MD & CEO, Dalmia Bharat (cement), Praveer Sinha, CEO & MD, Tata Power (power), Sandeep Kumar Gupta, CMD, GAIL (oil & gas), Shashi Kiran Shetty, Founder and Chairman, Allcargo Group (Transport & Logistics), Sanjay Koul, CMD, Timken India (Auto & Auto Ancillaries), S. Suresh, MD, EID Parry (Agriculture & Allied), Deepak C Mehta, CMD, Deepak Nitrite (Chemicals), Sajjan Bhajanka, Chairman, Century Plyboards (Industrials), Parmod Sagar, MD & CEO - India, RHI Magnesita (Consumer Goods), Suneeta Reddy, MD, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise (Pharma & Healthcare), Suresh Narayanan, CMD, Nestlé India (FMCG) and Dinesh Kumar Khara, Chairman, SBI (BFSI). 

The evening saw several stars of corporate India such as Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran, Piramal Group Chairman Ajay Piramal as well as Infosys co-founder & Chairman Nandan Nilekani talk about the burning topics of the day. 

In one of the most interesting sessions of the evening, the minister himself spoke about "India as a Global Economic Power". 
 
“Looking at the capex programmes of the private sector as well as our public sector enterprises, we are very confident of achieving our target of 300 MT production capability in another eight to nine years,” he said.

Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran said: "Our capital investments for the next five years, 60-70% will be in India. The (planned) investment is about $90 billion, around $70 billion will be in India."

Amidst global headwinds that have slowed down the growth of various economies across the world, Ajay Piramal, Chairman of the Piramal Group, said India has tailwinds. 
"If you look at India, rather than headwinds, they are tailwinds. And there is a lot of positive interest in India today as many large investors want to invest here." 

Infosys Co-founder & Chairman Nandan Nilekani emphasised the need for "right guardrails" to balance innovation and regulation in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in India. 

BT MindRush was started in 2013. Since then, the event has established itself as one of the most sought-after events in the Indian corporate calendar. 

Aroon Purie, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, India Today Group, said: "Today, we have many world class companies in India, heads of many of them are amongst us today. Also, we have the third largest ecosystem of startups in the world. India is basically a country of entrepreneurs from street sellers to multinational companies."

He added that the winners who stood there, did so having faced many odds. "It is still not easy to conduct business in India whatever the rankings may say. People who work on the frontline know better. Don't get me wrong. A lot has changed. But we have a long way to go to have an environment that is friendly to business and one that recognises that our entrepreneurs are one of the most valuable assets of our country," he said.

The winners were based on BT-PwC India's Best CEOs ranking. The study used a robust 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 stringent filters, the names of top 3 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 & CEO, Increate Value Advisors; Mehul Pandya, MD & CEO, CARE Ratings; Mathew Cyriac, Executive Chairman, Florintree Advisors; and J.N. Gupta, Co-founder & MD, Stakeholders Empowerment Services.