An engineer by qualification and an officer of the Indian Administrative Service by profession, Ajay Sawhney has been a champion of information technology for over three and a half decades.
Commencing his career in government in 1984, Mr. Sawhney has staunchly advocated participative governance, steered population scale adult literacy and digital literacy efforts and led the setting up of the International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad in India. Leveraging technology to solve problems, he has actively designed and guided numerous path-breaking state and national eGovernance projects, and passionately promoted the growth of IT as well as electronic manufacturing industry in India.
Mr. Sawhney served as the Union Secretary for the Ministry of Electronics and IT from June 2017 to February 2022, where he brought tremendous focus to National Public Digital Platforms like UPI, Govt eMarketplace (GeM), Umang, Digilocker, Aarogya Setu and Cowin, as well as the National Digital Health Mission, the National Digital Education Architecture (NDEAR), Future Skills Prime and India Ecosystem Architecture (InDEA).
During this period, he worked closely with the industry to grow electronic manufacturing in India at over 17% CAGR and contributed significantly to the National Policy on Electronics, the National Policy on Software Products, the National Semiconductor Mission, and the national strategies in Blockchain and Additive Manufacturing. Nurturing Indian technology startups has been a consistent feature of his portfolio. Under his leadership, the first India Internet Governance forum was conducted during 2021.