CIO Profile: STT GDC’s Milind Kulkarni on how CIOs can add value

Milind Kulkarni, now senior vice president of corporate strategy, government relationship, digital and IT at ST Telemedia Global Data Center (STT GDC), started out as an electrical engineer. However, he soon discovered an interest in the world of IT and decided to make a career of it.

For Kulkarni, this transition wasn’t a difficult one: “It was easy because I always had that bent of mind towards technology and taking challenges is important for me. It was easy because I had the intentions and passion and was looking for a change.”

Here are edited excerpts of CIO India’s conversation with him.

CIO India: Explain your career path. What has been your greatest career achievement?

Kulkarni: I think the one I would like to highlight is from when we were demerging from Tata Communications and forming STT GDC India. Tata Communications is a telecom company and STT GDC is a data center company. We had two options — either follow the steps of Tata Communications or build a new architecture and thought processes as STT GDC India. I was part of the demerger from an early stage and had analyzed both options thoroughly.

I chose the option of building our own architecture and stack separately. We used cloud-first technologies with API integrations and all that from an analytics perspective on how we can make it stronger at the cybersecurity level. We implemented these projects on various cloud platforms very fast and even we received industry awards and recognition for it.