Economic Times Awards 2015 – Complete List

Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Secretary Amitabh Kant honoured with ” Policy Change Agent Award”.

Kant, who has Prime Minister Narendra Modi as his follower on Twitter, has been the force behind key initiatives of the government — be it ‘Make in India’, ‘Ease of Doing Business’, FDI reforms or simplification of defence licensing.

Ola bags Startup of The Year award .
Since the inception 5 years ago, Ola have grown by leaps and bounds and are now present in over 100 cities, impacting the mobility of millions every day.

This award goes to GreyOrange.
Being a startup is one of the toughest things to do and being a hardware startup brings another set of challenges.

Kunal Bahl has been conferred with the Entrepreneur of the Year award.
In 2007, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services rejected the visa application of a Wharton graduate to stay on in that country and start a business, a decision that forced the young man to return home and start a business in India instead.
That business is now called Snapdeal and the entrepreneur is Kunal Bahl.

Piyush Goyal wins Business Reformer Award
When Piyush Goyal took charge of power, coal and renewable energy in the Narendra Modi government, the youthful and energetic minister of state was handling a very complex, reform-resistant and scandal prone domain that was divided between three cabinet ministers in the past.
An alleged Rs 1.8 lakh crore coal scam, stranded thermal power plants, acute coal scarcity and mounting losses of state utilities were some of the problems he inherited.
The challenges are inefficiency of distribution companies; continuing the pace of coal auctions, achieving the ambitious target of 1,75,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity and litigation following the auctions.
Goyal is a tough taskmaster who sits with his team while they burn the midnight by oil.
A bureaucrat recalled how they prepared the coal ordinance in three sleepless nights.

Navaratna PSU National Aluminium Company Limited (NALCO) has been selected for the prestigious ‘Performance Excellence Award – 2014’, instituted by the Indian Institution of Industrial Engineering (IIIE).
Attributing the success to the concerted efforts of NALCO Collective, Chand said that NALCO’s business excellence is based on company’s productivity, profitability and credibility.

Softbank CEO Nikesh Arora easily won the Global Indian award, edging out the two other contenders — Prem Vatsa and Sundar Pichai — who were considered by the jury.
For Arora, 2015 has been a stellar year. The India-born executive was appointed president of Japanese telecom giant SoftBank in June, and it was hinted he could succeed its iconic founder Masayoshi Son.
Arora went to the US for an MBA course.
He was a telecom analyst at Putnam Investments, a startup founder, and a top executive at T-Mobile before joining Google in 2004.
That year, Google went public. Arora, who started at Google as president of sales for the European region, rose to become its chief business officer.
He was one of the highest paid executives there.

Infosys walks away with Corporate Citizen Award.
Two entities, Infosys Science Foundationand Infosys Foundation, USA, both of recent vintage, are driving the (Corporate Social Responsibility) CSR activities of Infosys into an esoteric yet critical realm rarely explored by corporates — science and maths.
The company had steered its CSR initiatives through the Infosys Foundation with its focus on traditional issues and challenges.
They continue to remain on the CSR radar, but what’s galvanising Infosys is the new thrust on evangelising science and maths across educational, social and professional hierarchies, across geographies.
The ET Awards jury was impressed with the ‘quality of its effort’, coupled with the scale.
In 2014-15, Infosys spent Rs 243 crore, or around 2 per cent of its profits, on CSR.
The multifaceted approach is clearly catalysing an ecosystem in overhauling the understanding, teaching and research in these subjects.

Eicher Motors, led by Siddhartha Lal, was the top Emerging Company of the year.
One jury member noted that Eicher was an old company that had “re-emerged”, pointing to the difficult transformation it went through when it shed its tractor business.
“The world’s largest company (Apple) is also dependent on one product,” this person remarked, and the rest of the jury agreed.

Hindustan Unilever, one of the country’s biggest multinationals, won the Company of the Year award, with the discussion swinging between it, Lupin and Axis Bank.
But the jury finally settled for HUL, choosing its size, consistent track record, strong governance processes and its ability to soldier on with a strong array of brands in a tough market.