Pune had a strong showing at the excellence awards given out at the recently held globalization conference, Confluence 2013, held in Bangalore by Zinnov (a globalization and market expansion advisory firm), with Punekars winning 2 individual awards (3 if you look closely), and 4 company awards.

At the conference – whose theme this year was “Unlocking India’s Innovation Potential,” Zinnov recognized individuals and companies in 7 different categories. There were 200+ nominations from 50+ companies (mostly MNCs).

Here is the list of Punekars who won:

• Pradeep Kulkarni, Distinguished Engineer, Symantec, one of two winners of the “Technical Role Model (Senior Level)” award, for “technology stalwarts and have served by example and inspired individuals both within their organization and beyond to emulate them and follow a technical career path”. Note: the second winner in this category, is Sairam Veeraswamy, of EMC, who is also ex-Veritas, ex-Pune, so Pune can take some credit for him too.

• Suhas Kelkar, CTO (APAC), BMC Software, one of two winners in the “Thought Leadership” category, for “visionaries or have demonstrated original thinking and contributed ideas and/or to initiatives that have had an impact on the overall technology ecosystem.” This is the second year in a row that Suhas has won this award.

Amongst the company awards, these Pune companies won:

• Amdocs, one of two winners for “Best in Class Ability to Create Next Generation Leaders”, for “MNC Centers that have created a sustainable leadership engine. The company’s mechanism to create and feed leadership roles (both local and global) in a sustainable manner through programs to identify, train and groom talent was assessed.”
• Allscripts, one of two winners for “Most Successful Attrition Management (Software/Internet R&D Companies)”, in other words, “MNC Technology centers that have successfully managed attrition within their organizations despite the industry average of ~11% in the last year. The assessment criteria, apart from the attrition numbers, evaluated the proactive measures taken by organizations to understand their employees’ needs as well as the innovative practices introduced to develop and retain people”
• Honeywell, for “Innovation – Potential to Solve Large Problems”. This recognizes “organizations that have successfully solved or are in the process of solving large problems that has or will have a significant impact on society. These problems being addressed can be planet scale, restricted to developed markets or emerging markets but should have been addressed in the last (12 – 18 months) with the India Center playing a significant role in the initiative.”
• Mercedes-Benz R&D. Same as above.

Suhas Kelkar, CTO (APAC) of BMC Software, “In general we Punekars had a STRONG presence there, an indication of rising importance of Pune belt in Software Products ecosystem. This is not just my opinion, but a general feeling expressed by various people at the conference.”