Venguswamy Ramaswamy
Innovating to meet student expectations in India and internationally
By 2030, India will have a population of 1.4 billion people, the largest population of any country in the world. The median age is projected at 32 years, significantly lower than China (43) and the United States (39). The imperative of addressing education challenges will be substantially magnified by this continuing growth.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is India's largest technology company, with almost 400,000 employees in 54 countries and revenues of over US$17.5 billion. Like the rest of the Tata Group, TCS is two thirds owned by philanthropic trusts, with much good done in education.
iON is a Cloud platform division of TCS, focused on education. Formed in 2011, iON has managed over 100 million candidates through proctored computer based exams and has developed many platforms that impact learning, teaching and institutional excellence.
Faced with education challenges, iON is responding with innovation and mobilisation on a grand scale to address key problems with patented solutions, while always impacting student experience.
We impact learning by adding social enablers, supporting blended learning and tutor and peer-supported learning online and by facilitating and enabling continual investment in content by reaching larger audiences.
We use our assessment experience to transform marking at scale and support timely assessment for learning, so that feedback is faster and of higher quality.
We engineer for rapid delivery of capabilities of Cloud apps functionality, so that we enable institutions to more quickly meet the expectations of their students.
Swamy has led iON from inception. He will describe how we have enhanced student experience and our ambition to impact education in India and internationally at scale in collaboration with others of like mind.
Venguswamy Ramaswamy
Global Head – iON, Tata Consultancy Services
Venguswamy Ramaswamy, or “Swamy”, heads the iON business unit of Indian multinational, Tata Consultancy Services – a strategic unit transforming education in India and more recently internationally. Swamy was instrumental in setting up the unit, and the main architect behind the cloud computing solutions it offers.
Earlier, as director of TCS’ Global Consulting Practice (GCP), he was pivotal in building the consulting organization. Consulting Magazine noted this to name him amongst the top 25 consultants of the year 2007.
Swamy has held important positions including managing the largest customer relationship for TCS. With an abiding interest in modern software quality methods, he also headed the Process Consulting group.
He was closely involved in TCS’ globalization initiatives for the last few years. He helped in making delivery footprints in strategic locations like Hungary and China. His role as head of Corporate Resource Management saw centralized processes for mobilizing delivery skills across TCS global operations.
A Six Sigma Master Black belt, Swamy has an exponent of new ways to quality. His speeches in business forums are marked by ideas about new business models, often making innovation stand in subtle contrast to quality.
A fitness enthusiast and regular marathon runner, he lives in Mumbai with his wife Lakshmi and two children.
