Mohammad Rayees

I’m a technology leader who has spent 27 years inside one of India’s most complex and demanding conglomerates — the ITC Group — rising from Management Trainee to Divisional CIO. That journey has given me something rare: I understand the business as deeply as I understand the technology that serves it. Today, as Vice President – IT Services and embedded Divisional CIO for ITC’s Packaging & Printing Business (PPB), I own the full IT mandate — strategy, infrastructure, applications, cybersecurity, OT/IoT, and now Artificial Intelligence — across a ₹2,200 Crore South Asian leader in value-added packaging, with four manufacturing units spanning Chennai, Haridwar, Nadiad, and Munger. MY APPROACH TO TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP I don’t believe in technology for technology’s sake. Every initiative I lead is rooted in a business outcome: lower cost, faster throughput, better compliance, stronger security, or smarter decisions. In 2026, that philosophy extends firmly into AI — deploying it where it creates measurable value, and governing it where it creates risk. WHAT I’VE DELIVERED ► Intelligent Automation → Agentic AI Built PPB’s RPA capability from zero: 63 Automation Anywhere bots generating 100+ man-days/month. Now evolving toward Agentic AI with AARI and Co-Pilot for autonomous, multi-step workflow orchestration. ► ₹500 Cr Greenfield Factory End-to-end IT delivery for Nadiad plant — network, SAP, OT security, O365 — entirely in-house, on schedule, zero external consultancy. ► IT/OT Convergence & Cybersecurity OT firewalls, DMZ segmentation, Forward Proxy for secure Bobst cloud diagnostics, CrowdStrike, Zscaler Zero Trust, VAPT across all internet-facing apps.► GenAI & Copilot Leadership Led PPB’s M365 Copilot pilot and contributed to ITC Group’s enterprise GenAI rollout — deployment, adoption, and AI governance (acceptable use policy, data privacy controls, risk framework).► ₹11.91 Crore Storage & DR Rollout — ITC Most Valuable Delivery Manager Award I won the Most Valuable Delivery Manager award for leading a centralised storage rollout across 28 units, migrating 40 TB of data and establishing distant DR, eliminating tape backup entirely. WHAT SETS ME APART Full-stack depth across OT security, SAP, RPA, custom apps, cloud, and GenAI governance. 15+ years authoring a weekly technology newsletter to senior stakeholders. I use Copilot, Claude and ChatGPT daily to accelerate strategy and decision-making. OPEN TO: CIO | VP – IT | Group CIO roles in manufacturing, FMCG, or multi-site environments. Open to relocation.