By Val Souza

Meet Jai Menon, Group CIO of Bharti Enterprises Ltd., a $7.5 billion conglomerate based in New Delhi. Menon is responsible for formulating and leading IT strategy for more than a dozen businesses, ranging from telecom and retail to agriculture and real estate. With a shrewd understanding of business needs, he and his team have built a business-outcome oriented model for the telecom business whereby the entire IT expenditure is no longer a matter of capital expenditure or operational expenditure, but is completely and directly linked to revenues.

Menon is also Director for Technology and Customer Service at Indian telecom giant Bharti Airtel, a unit of Bharti Enterprises. In this role, he is responsible for how the company deals with its 100 million (and growing) customers. As if that were not enough, Menon has also launched a business unit for his organization. He set it up to handle strategic alliances with the likes of Google, Apple and VeriSign.

Is Menon a one-of-a-kind overachiever? Hardly. In fact, he is typical of today's Indian CIO. There, CIOs across the board — in sectors as diverse as finance and retail, manufacturing and advertising, telecom and real estate — have proved to be versatile souls. These CIOs go far beyond IT by having a keen understanding of core business func - tions and organizational strategy. For further examples of India's versatile CIOs, consider these four executives:

Laxman Badiga, Corporate VP and CIO, Wipro Technologies:
Badiga oversees myriad operational issues at this Indian software services provider, including global facilities and administration, material procurement and movement, and global visas. In fact, he is responsible for all operations except those that are directly related to finance and HR. Badiga is also Wipro's CIO. In this role, he has established a seamless IT infrastructure for the company's massive global workforce and initiated innovative concepts that have blurred the traditional lines between supply-chain management, HR and the operations of Wipro's IT business.