In January 2008, Mr. Kiran Karnik, the outgoing President of NASSCOM, passed on the reins to  Mr. Som Mittal, who heads the services business of Hewlett-Packard for Asia-Pacific and the Japan region. The IT Department, Govt. of West Bengal and Webel felicitated both Mr. Karnik and Mr. Mittal, on the 15th of January, 2008, in the presence of a large number of stalwarts, from the IT/ITes industry and the State Government. The attendance was unprecedented and was an indicator of the respect and love the industry people have for the man who has almost single handedly changed the face of IT/ITes in India.

Kiran Karnik had taken up the position of President of Nasscom in September 2001 after the sudden demise of Dewang Mehta. As the chief executive of the apex body representing India’s IT software and services industry, he worked very closely with the industry, the central and the state governments to formulate policies and strategies for the advancement of this sector locally as well as internationally. He has been the guiding force for the Indian IT industry during the outsourcing backlash and has been instrumental in promoting India’s technology strength to the world. He has provided a lifeline to the nascent Indian  IT industry, bringing to the forefront the advantages of Business Process Transformation. His key contributions were to build global brand equity for the Indian software and services industry and aligning Nasscom to be a more corporatized organization to fulfill  the industry’s objectives.
Under his leadership the IT-ITes industry has registered strong growth, with a 10-fold growth in the last few years.  It is already India’s top exporter and well on track to achieve the target of $60 billion by 2010.
His recommendation for the extention of the STPI  beyond 2009and his views on tackling the impact of the weakening dollar, which could greatly have jeopardized the position of software and BPO companies in the country, was hailed by the central government as a pointer to Mr. Karnik’s understanding of the industry and it’s functioning.
The felicitation ceremony was attended by the stalwarts of the industry and most of them spoke up to share their deep appreciation and respect for Mr.Karnik. Dr.Debesh Das, Minister-in-Charge, Dept. of Information Technology, Govt. of West Bengal, along with a host of other dignitaries were present to grace the occasion. Siddharth, Principal Secretary to MIC, Dept. of IT, Govt. of West Bengal, Mr. Debanjan Dutta, MD-Webel, Mr.N.R.Banerjea, Vice Chancellor of BESU and Chairman of Webel and Mr. Ashok Basu, IAS, Member-State Planning Board were present on the dais along with Mr. Karnik and Mr. Mittal. Every speaker had something special to say about Mr. Karnik and Mr. Mittal.  Some had anecdotes to share with the audience and some spoke of their experience of working with Mr. Karnik.