Deepak Puri, managing director of Moser Baer, the world's third largest manufacturer of optical media, is Dataquest's IT Man of the Year for 2003.

Puri has been selected for the award for his outstanding contribution in putting India on the global manufacturing map, a release said, adding in a short span of five years, his company had increased capacity by over 30 times and revenue had grown at an annual growth rate of 170 per cent even in times of a slowdown.

Moser Baer India also gets the award for the fastest growing company.

Vijay Bhatkar, chairman, Dishnet DSL, bagged Dataquest's Lifetime Achievement Award for 2003 for making India self-reliant in high-end computing and promoting multi-lingual computing.

Ashok Jhunjhunwala, professor, IIT, Chennai, has been conferred the Pathbreaker Award for his low-cost telecom solutions for taking IT and communications to rural areas.

In 2002, Bharti group chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal was the IT Man of Year, while Sam Pitroda had received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dataquest Top 20 Corporate Awards included TCS as the top IT company, HCL Infosystems as the top PC vendor, Microsoft India as the top packaged software vendor, Samsung India as top peripheral vendor, Cisco Systems as top networking company and HP India as top hardware vendor.

NIIT is the top training company and Cadence Design is the best IT employer, while GE Caps bagged the BPO Employees Satisfaction Award.