Venkatesh Natarajan

Mr. Venkatesh NatarajanEx President-IT & Chief Digital Officer Ashok Leyland LimitedVenkatesh Natarajan or ‘VN’ as he is popularly called in the Industry, is a Tech Visionary par excellence in the Automotive Domain. He has worked in various capacities across diverse areas of Plant Maintenance, Production, Sales & Marketing before pursuing a stellar career in Information Technology. His 33 years of multifaceted experience in the Manufacturing industry includes 25 years of focused expertise in ‘IT embedded Business Transformation’. He currently serves on the Board of multiple Companies both in the capacity of a Director as well as an Advisor.VN served as President IT & Chief Digital Officer at Ashok Leyland with over 22 years of association with the company and had been responsible for evangelizing and turbocharging Digital Technology Practices and creating a pan-organization ‘Data Driven Culture’. He is extremely passionate about driving digital resilience, excellence & innovation in the ‘New-Age’ Technology domains of Connected Vehicles, Industry 4.0, AI and Analytics. His inspiring leadership has been a prime-mover for AL’s transition from the ‘Manufacturing Led Era’ to the ‘Digital Led Era’ as a Technology Company. Driven by the canons of Bhagavad Gita, VN believes in being and leading the change that he wants to see around him. He bets big on creating a ‘Data Driven Culture’ with razor sharp focus on creating ‘High performing- High Energy Agile Teams. A staunch ‘People’s Leader’, VN specializes in harnessing the tremendous power of human capital towards furthering Technology adoption and creation of ‘New Business Models’. His unique expertise lies in ’Hyper scaling’ Digital Tech solutions that add exponential business value to all stakeholders of the Automotive ecosystem.VN is passionate about teaching /sharing his knowledge with the student community and is a visiting faculty in premier business schools. His belief of being a lifelong student, helps him explore newer possibilities to fuse Tech and Culture to create sustained Business Value. With his innate passion for New-Age Technologies like AI, VN considers himself a ‘Student’, a ‘Practitioner’ and a ‘Teacher’, all blended into one. VN is an extremely articulate communicator and a renowned speaker in many prestigious global events hosted by leading tech companies and management consultancies. He has won multiple awards and recognitions for his Technology Stewardship.VN is a Mechanical Engineer with a Post-Graduation in Engg Mgmt