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By a Staff Reporter

The New York-based Asian American Business Devel-opment Center celebrated

the organization’s eighth annual “Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business Award” ceremony June 10 at the hilton New York in New York City.

The awards honor Asian Amer-ican business executives and professionals engaged in a wide range of business interests.

“Initially, I had second thoughts about organizing the event this year due to the economic crisis we are in,” said AABDC president John Wang. “But on reflection, this is the Asian American story – working hard and achieving success despite adversity and a tough environment.”

Among South Asia Americans honored were (in alphabetical order):

Aziz Ahmad is co-founder and CeO of New York-based UTC As-sociates, a systems and network integration company. he was lead architect of AT&T’s voice-over-IP

networks and founded Vonair, a multimedia applications provider. Ahmad is a board member of Gra-meen Solutions and the Grameen IT Park in Bangladesh.

Trained as an electrical engi-neer, Roshan Baig is a technology services manager at Capgemini Consulting Services, where he has provided strategic advice for multi-billion dollar companies.

Sonny Chabra is chairman and CeO of ASI System Integration. After joining American Mini Computer (later renamed AMC Computer Corp.) in 1988, he bought the company eight years later and sold it to a private equity firm. Chabra is the recipient of the ernst & Young entrepreneur of the Year award, the Blue Chip enterprise executive of the Year award from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the ellis Island Medal of honor.

Rennu Dhillon is founder and owner of Genius Kids, Inc., in Fremont, Calif. which employs instructional methods to create “high energy-paced classrooms filled with laughter, dance and

fun learning.” Recently her pro-grams were selected out of 2,600 entries as one six finalists in the American Business Stevie Awards. KRON-TV 4 nominated Genius Kids as “Best Preschool in Alameda County” for 2009. Dhil-lon has a B.S. in pharmacy and a Ph.D. in natural sciences. She was born and raised in Kenya, east Africa, and completed her education in england.

Dr. Apurv Gupta, principal at Atria BPh, a healthcare services and consulting firm, is a former interim vice president of medical affairs at Caritas Norwood hos-pital in Massachusetts. A former CeO of hospitalist Partners, he is past president of the Indian Medi-cal Association of New england and co-chair of the Boston Chap-ter of Akshaya Patra USA.

Thejaswi Gurumurthy is COO and co-founder of Syven Global Services, a business consulting firm. he teaches valuation and modeling to investment banking analysts at banks, universities and corporations. Gurumurthy

By RICHARD SPRINGERIndia-West Staff Reporter

AJAY Banga , a top banking executive who heads Citicorp’s Asia-Pacific business,

is leaving the company to become the president and chief operating officer at MasterCard Inc.

The 49-year-old Banga now becomes the heir apparent to MasterCard CeO Robert W. Se-lander, who will give up the post of president when Banga joins the Purchase, N.Y.-based credit card company Aug. 31.

Selander in a statement said Banga’s “experience in diverse in-dustries and diverse geographies will reinforce and strengthen our global competencies as electronic payments continue to accelerate worldwide.”

“This is clearly a wonderful opportunity to join a company at the forefront of advancing global commerce,” added Banga.

“From its strong technology base to its local market expertise, MasterCard has many important resources in place to make life easier for consumers and pay-ment systems more efficient for businesses and governments around the world.”

Banga is the latest seasoned executive to leave Citi, which is facing pressure after government bailouts to increase the ranks of executives with retail-banking experience.

Among those who have left Citi are investment banker Michael Klein and wealth-management chief Sally Krawcheck.

Banga is considered an ally of Citigroup CeO Vikram Pandit, who spent most of his career in investment banking before taking over at Citi in December 2007.

Banga, who joined Citi in 1996 as head of marketing and sales in India, rose through the ranks to become head of sales, market-ing and business development

for europe, Middle east and Africa; and then division execu-tive, consumer bank, for Central and eastern europe, Middle east and Africa.

In 2000 he was named busi-ness head, CitiFinancial and U.S. Consumer Assets; and in 2002 became executive VP, Global Consumer Group, and president, Retail Banking North America.

he was named chairman and CeO of Citi’s Global Consumer Group International in 2005 and appointed to his current post in 2008.

Prior to Citigroup, Banga spent 13 years with Nestle India and two years with PepsiCo. his brother, Vindi, is an executive at Unilever NV.

Banga sits on the boards of Kraft Foods and the National Urban League and on the board of trustees of the Asia Society.

he has a B.A. in economics

MasterCard Names Ajay Banga President, COO

Ajay Banga.

Rennu Dhillon, founder and owner of Genius Kids in Fremont, Calif., accepts the “Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business Award” June 10 in New York from Asian American Business Development Center president John Wang.

AABDC Honors 14 South Asian American Business Leaders

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from Delhi University and is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Citicorp said that a succes-sor for Banga will “be named

shortly.”Pandit said, “I want to thank

Ajay for his leadership and for the significant contributions he has made to building the great global franchise that Citi is today.”

MasterCard Names Ajay Banga President and COO

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has a B.S. in engineering from the University of Mysore and an M.B.A. from the Stern School of Business.

Anurag Harsh, vice president and director, national strategic solutions, at CBS Interactive, heads business and sales at CBS Interactive Music Group. A for-mer director of business develop-ment at CNN, he led the media practices at Deloitte and Charles River. Harsh has a master’s de-gree in classical music and is a trained vocalist who performed a solo concert recently at Carnegie Hall. He also runs the “Save Dal Lake” movement focused on pro-tecting the largest natural lake in the world.

Zaki Uddin Khalifa, who left a banking career in Lahore, Paki-stan, to immigrate to the U.S. at the age of 32, founded Zaki Ori-ental Rugs in High Point, N.C., which specializes in importing hand-knitted rugs from India and other countries in Asia. He lectures on the plight of immi-grants in the Middle East and South Asia and is known for his philanthropic work.

Shahid Khan is a strategy con-sultant in the pharmaceutical industry. A former consultant at Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline, he is currently working with Harvard Medical International to develop a $500-million academic medical center in Pakistan. Khan is vice president of the Pakistani-American Congress.

Raghu Krishnamoorthy, senior human resources manager for

AABDC Honors 14 South Asian American Business Leaders

Neerja Raman, senior fellow and Me-dia X Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University.

Raghu Krishnamoorthy, senior human resources manager for GE Corporate Commercial and Com-munications.

Sonny Chabra, chairman and CEO of ASI System Integration.

Gurudatta Nadkarni, vice presi-dent of strategic planning at Con Edison.

Manmeet Singh Virdi, co-founder, partner and CEO at the Aequor Group of companies.

Thejaswi Gurumurthy, COO and co-founder of Syven Global Services.

Anurag Harsh, vice president and director, national strategic solutions, at CBS Interactive.

Imran Shah, co-founder and man-aging partner at IBB Consulting Group.

GE Corporate Commercial and Communications, joined GE Capital in 1994 as head of HR for GE Capital (India) as the fourth employee. He was awarded the GE Heroes of Growth Award. Prior to GE, Krishnamoorthy worked for Xerox and American Express. A Fulbright Scholar, he has an M.B.A. from the In-dian Institute of Management at

Ahmedabad.Gurudatta Nadkarni joined

Con Edison as vice president of strategic planning in 2008. Before that, he held posts in corporate strategy and develop-ment at Duke Energy, McKinsey & Co. and International Paper. Nadkarni has an M.B.A. in fi-nance and marketing from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D.

in physics from Carnegie Mellon University.

Neerja Raman is a senior fel-low and Media X Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford Uni-versity, where she is researching business models and metrics for technology-based solutions for sustainable development. Previ-ously, Raman was director, stra-tegic planning, and founder of the Imaging Systems Lab at Hewlett Packard Labs. She also served two terms on the advisory com-mittee for cyber-infrastructure at the National Science Foundation

and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Women in Technology International. Raman is a gradu-ate of the Kellogg Executive Pro-gram at Northwestern University and has master’s degrees from S.U.N.Y Stony Brook and Delhi University.

Imran Shah is co-founder and managing partner at IBB Consult-ing Group, which consults on broadband-related products. He also held senior posts at Philips Electronics and PA Consulting

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AABDC Honors 14 South Asian American Business Leaders

Group. Shah won an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year

cal engineering from Columbia University.

Manmeet Singh Virdi is co-founder, partner and CEO at the Aequor Group of companies, co-founded by his brother, Kamal-preet. The firms include Aequor

Technologies, Aequor Health-care, Aequor Homes, Aequor Funding and CPLC Education Centers. Born in New Delhi, he began his career while in college with a small company that made computers. He then worked at

Lucent Technologies, Sun Ameri-can and Citibank. The CPLC Education Center was recently awarded Outstanding Educa-tion and Training Institution by the National Minority Business Council.

Aziz Ahmad, co-founder and CEO of New York-based UTC Associates.

Dr. Apurv Gupta, principal at Atria BPH.

Zaki Uddin Khalifa, co-owner of Zaki Oriental Rugs.

Pharmaceutical industry consultant Shahid Khan.

Roshan Baig, technology services manager at Capgemini Consulting

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By a Staff Reporter

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health has awarded Emory University and the Public Health Foundation of India a grant to establish a Global Center of Excellence for the prevention and control of cardiometabolic diseases in South Asia, according to a press release.

The $3 million, five-year grant will be used to study the burden and risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes in India and

Public Health Foundation of India presi-dent K. Srinath Reddy.

NIH Awards $3M Contract for Cardiometabolic Disease Research

Pakistan. The center will also help train young scientists in those countries to conduct diabetes and heart disease research.

“This center of excellence represents a wonderful ex-ample of a mutually benefi-cial partnership in research and training between Emory University and the Public Health Foundation of India,” said PHFI president K. Sri-nath Reddy. “The Center will

develops heart disease in the future.

“The Center’s strategies are two-fold,” says Narayan. “First, what can we do to postpone the occurrence of heart disease and diabetes or prevent it, and second, once someone develops diabetes, what can we do to better control the disease and prevent its com-plications.”

make a tremendous contribution to the prevention and control of cardiometabolic diseases in South Asia.”

Researchers will establish three surveillance cohorts in Chennai, New Delhi and Karachi, and will test 4,000 people in each city for heart disease and its risk factors. Researchers will then follow those sampled to determine who

MUMBAI (AP) – Moody’s has downgraded the rating of Tata Steel due to weak performance by its U.K. Corus unit – a sign of how irksome Tata’s ambitious overseas acquisitions have become since the global financial crisis hit.

Tata Steel was rated at Ba3 from Ba2, the second downgrade since March. Both ratings are below investment grade. Moody’s also downgraded Tata Steel U.K. to B2 from B1 – both speculative grade ratings – the second downgrade since January.

“Reduced cash flow generation and increased leverage to support Tata Steel U.K. are putting pres-sure on Tata Steel India’s credit profile,” Ivan Palacios, an analyst for the ratings agency, said in a statement.

“However, the company’s abil-ity to provide further equity to the European operation is backed by the strong support from the domestic banking sector,” he added.

In 2007, Tata Steel acquired Corus, Europe’s second-largest steel producer, and the next year, Tata Motors bought the Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford Motor Co.

In May, Tata Steel renegotiated $5.4 billion in acquisition related debt. As part of the deal, Tata Steel injected $635.4 million) into its U.K. subsidiary. That same month, Tata Motors managed, after much difficulty, to complete refinancing of a $3 billion bridge loan it took to pay for the Jaguar Land Rover deal.

Tata Steel DowngradedOn U.K. Unit Weakness