People: Tata Steel Ltd (TISC.BO)

Mr. Varun Kumar Jha is Vice President - Engineering and Chhattisgarh Project of Tata Steel Limited. Mr. Jha joined Tata Steel Limited in 1972 as a graduate trainee and started his professional career in the Engineering Division. He is currently the Vice President of the Chattisgarh Project. He has worked in various capacities in the Engineering Division and Modernisation Group and was responsible for project management and construction of a number of projects under Modernisation. He has worked in the area of Technical Training and was involved in revamping Graduate Training and other training programmes including training of personnel for new projects. In 1993 he worked for about a year looking after the maintenance of Electrical and Electronic equipment for Hot Strip Mill and other new facilities. From mid 1994 he has led Information Technology Services. He was responsible for implementation of a number of IT projects including SAP R/3 systems, Production Planning Systems for Flat Products, Long Products and for the Cold Rolling Mill, Data Warehousing and Datamining, Knowledge Management, e-Procurement etc. He was also responsible for out-sourcing of IT infrastructure to IBM and IT for plant systems to HP. In 2003, Mr. Jha led the project to develop IT strategy for the company. Gartner executed the project in consultation with an in-house team consisting of business managers and IT professionals. Mr. Jha has led the IT Panel of CII- Jharkhand Council and has interacted with Government Agencies to help formulate IT policy and also to promote e-Governance in the state.