Kishore Kondragunta
VP & Head of IT
Toyota Motor North America
Kishore Kondragunta serves as V.P., Head of IT at Woven Planet Holdings, a Toyota subsidiary. He focuses on building software platforms, tools and services to enable mobility everywhere, disrupt transportation, and improve sustainability.
Kishore, in his current role, is responsible for all aspects of IT at Woven Planet, including standing up, running and sustaining systems, processes, and infrastructure. Kishore began his career in software development at Oracle in 2000 and worked at various Fortune 50 companies including Apple, Oracle and Intel before starting at Woven Planet to contribute to its vision of "Mobility to Love, Safety to Live.”
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Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.
My professional journey encompasses a progressive path, starting as a Data Architect intern and a founding member of a startup while completing my Masters and acting as president of a student association at the university. Upon graduation, I held various roles in software development, customer success, program management, and IT — leading global and multicultural teams at Fortune 50 companies.
I built a passion towards technology, trust, and compassion, as well as some amazing teams and friendships throughout the journey. My experience and passion in software development and Information Technology across software, hardware, manufacturing, fabrication, semiconductor and consumer device sectors prepared me to take my current role as a Head of IT at Woven Planet to contribute to the future of Mobility.
What is one of your guiding leadership principles?
People, Process, Technology — the golden/equilateral triangle.
Always listen in and absorb before you react (there is a reason why we have two ears and one mouth).
Hire talent and teams who look at problems and bring in solution options to you, not problems.
Stay hungry and stay foolish (Credit: Steve Jobs).
With disruption being a key theme of the past year, where do you see your role as a CIO going in the next 1-2 years?
As a Head of IT, it is important that we lay out technical foundations, augment and enable business processes, and automate where possible, thereby improving and accelerating business agility. With the move to cloud at the helm, I am enabling technologies, creating gateways to disable cloud vendor lock in, moving workloads seamlessly between multi cloud, automating and not operating, and am striving to be at the forefront of digitization.
I am also building technologies so Woven Planet can collaborate with suppliers, partners and vendors securely and seamlessly. With automation and mobility generating a lot of data, I am building the infrastructure to gather, analyze, synthesize, and normalize the data for better and safe mobility.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out in the CIO role?
While we look at enabling technology for the future, we always see People and Process as the other two equal sides of the golden triangle in enabling business transformation and digitization. Understanding the business process before devising a technical solution is critical or else you will be building a home without a proper foundation.
Tell us 3 fun facts about yourself.
- I am an Auto enthusiast (driving my 22nd car, 23rd on order) and coincidentally landed at the world’s leading automobile company to help shape the future mobility.
- I have a great admiration for 3 great tech leaders, and I am fortunate enough to have worked for two (Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison). Didn’t get a chance to work for the 3rd one, Elon Musk, but I’m fortunate enough to work for a company challenging his Tesla.
- I gave a memorable (and nerve-wracking) 2-minute elevator pitch to Steve Jobs on my way to lunch one day.
What is the value of participating in a professional community through Evanta?
I have been a member of various technology groups and have learned through the journey. Being a part of this community, sharing the pain and gain with fellow tech and business leaders is very critical and always gives a different perspective and helps promote continuous learning and growth.
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