The woman who made HP India's top PC vendor again: Neelam Dhawan.

 Rejected by Hindustan Unilever and Asian Paints, Neelam Dhawan, an MBA graduate joined her company HCL in 1983. She has never looked back since. The current the Managing Director at Hewlett-Packard India, Dhawan joined HP in 1999.

While working for HCL, she was a part of the team that helped launch India’s first affordable Personal computer, priced between 20,000 to 40,000. She also successfully advertised for the same, using billboards and print ads- an uncommon trend at the time.  Before joining HP, Dhawan also helped set up India's first channel network for Tier-II towns.

At Hewlett-Packard, she got the firm its first two outsourcing contracts within 4 years of joining. After briefly working for Microsoft India as the Managing Director, she joined HP again in 2008. Ravi Venkatesan, former chairman at Microsoft India, shares his experience of working with Dhawan with Business Today, “Neelam has been a remarkably successful business professional. She is probably one of the finest sales leaders in the country. She builds very robust relationships with customers. She likes winning.”

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Her supportive husband and children are also an equally important priority. Dhawan believes, “The moment you tell yourself that your family and career are equal, you will make time for both.” When the mother of two had her first daughter, she had just taken 10 days off, as she was helping with setting up HCL America in the US. She mostly worked from home at the time and on the days she couldn’t find a baby sitter she’d take her daughter to work.

Her current plans include concentrating on large and transformational projects. She says, “I still think we are in a phase where many new solutions are being discussed,” while talking about HP VideoBook- which has managed to take the CBSE curriculum and has created digital content around videos, articles, etc. using the cloud technology. Over five lakh students are currently using this.

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Business Today

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