At MKCL
Mr. Sawant is the Managing Director and Cofounder of Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited (MKCL) which is a high-tech initiative of Government of Maharashtra (the most industrialized state in India) and 10 universities in Maharashtra for development and delivery of eLearning, eGovernance and eEmpowerment technologies, solutions and services to masses.
In MKCL, he has successfully integrated a network of 5000 IT training centers spanning over the Maharashtra state (India). This is the single largest private-public-partnership network of its kind in India. About 4.6 million learners have completed the high quality IT Literacy training viz. MS-CIT in this network in last 7 years.
He has also architected several software frameworks such as Digital University® for offering information, learning, facilitation and participative services to millions of University students on broadband portals of the Universities.
Career
Mr. Sawant started his career as Lecturer at Fergusson College, Pune University in Physics, Electronics and Computer Science. He taught these subjects at undergraduate and post-graduate levels during 1979 to 1987.
He was later on invited by the Symbiosis society as the Deputy Director of Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research where he served during 1987-88.
After a short stint at Symbiosis, he joined Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) a national flagship R&D mission to design and develop India’s indigenous PARAM Supercomputers. There he worked for more than a decade in various leadership roles in the fields of:
- PARAM Supercomputer Applications Development
- Intellectual Resources Development
- e-Governance Solutions Development
- Information Technology Applications for Rural Areas
- Infrastructure Development for High Performance Computing R&D
Contributions
During his tenure at C-DAC he founded the nationwide network of Advanced Computing Training Schools of C-DAC. Under his leadership, more than 25,000 software engineers were trained and placed in IT industry in India and abroad through this network in a period of 7 years.
After a long tenure at C-DAC, Mr. Sawant was invited by the Hope Foundation as the Director of International Institute of Information Technology (I2IT), Pune Infotech Park, Hijawadi, Pune. He made pioneering contributions during the years 2000 to 2002 at this institute in the field of advanced IT education and incubation of innovative start-up enterprises in IT.
Mr. Sawant has served on many committees at state and national level including the Prime Minister’s IT Task Force. He is the co-author of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana.
He has served on Boards of Studies and Academic Councils of several universities, academies and boards and is also an honorary fellow of Maharashtra Academy of Sciences.
Interests
His areas of interest include research and development in eLearning, eGovernance, eEmpowerment of communities, building knowledge society and building life long learning communities. He has extensively written on these topics and has also delivered several thought provoking speeches at national and international forums.
Awards and Honours
Mr. Sawant has been felicitated by various awards for his distinguished contributions in the field of IT education and IT enabled education. Some of the awards are -- Dnyanasurya Award, Rotary’s Young Recipient Award, Rotary’s Vocational Excellence Award, C-DAC’s Awards of Honor and Distinction, Maharashtra IT Award in HRD 2004, and the Yashokeerti Award of Computer Society of India to name a few. He was also nominated for World Technology Network (WTN) Award in Education for his work of likely long term significance in education.