Mandar is an Industry Leader in the areas of Cloud, Datacenter, Security, Digital Transformation, IT Service Management, Hybrid / Edge, Disaster Recovery/BCP and Artificial Intelligence. He has delivered complex IT solutions for large organizations in India and overseas, over last 27 years. Mandar is currently National Security Officer at Microsoft for India and South Asia. In this role, Mandar works with National Cybersecurity agencies to build capabilities to be at the national level cyber-safe and resilient, as well as prepare for the next generation of attacks and effectively mitigate current threats. He also leads Microsoft’s local compliance and certification strategy for Cloud and AI. His charter is to keep the country, citizens, customer and company safe working closely with Cybersecurity, Cyber defense, Cybercrime and regulatory ecosystem in India and South Asia to enhance both technology and policy framework of these agencies.
Earlier, Mandar led building and go-to-market of Microsoft’s cloud services in India, including rolling out of new datacenters, Azure, Office365, Dynamics CRM and Hybrid Cloud business. He also performed various leadership roles at Microsoft including Leading Customer Success Function at Azure Infrastructure, Modern Work, Business Application, Security, Digital Applications and Data and AI for manufacturing and conglomerates, leading Specialist Solutions Sales Team for Azure, led Azure Hybrid Cloud Business and spearheaded Technology transformation of Microsoft’s partner ecosystem as Partner Technology Lead.
Before joining Microsoft, Mandar was Chief Product Officer at Jio Platforms Ltd. – India’s leading Digital and Telecommunications Services company, helping them build India’s largest cloud portfolio from Edge to Multi-Cloud, from Sensors to SaaS.
He has 27+ years of experience in performing leadership roles in Strategy, Engineering, Product Management, Sales Leadership, Solutions, Operations and Delivery. His key areas of strength are creating new products & services and building a scalable organization to support growth of these. His expertise is processes improvement, technology solution architecting and strong emphasis on automation.
His earlier assignments were as Senior Vice President at Netmagic Solutions, part of NTT Communications group, Tata Communications, CyberTech / Corliant (acquired by Accenture), Indian Express, etc. He has done his education including various professional courses from prestigious institutions like University of Pune, IIM-Kolkata, The Wharton School, University of Texas McCombs School, etc. He has numerous industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, Security and is a certified lead Information Security auditor.
Mandar is a sought-after speaker on Security, Cloud, AI, Edge, DR/BCP, IT Service Management and automation in India, have spoken at many industry events and have authored many white papers and articles in these areas. He has been visiting industry expert at management institutions like SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, HVPM Collage of Engineering and other institutions.