* At MY Stars of the Industry Awards-2011

MUMBAI: 94.3 My FM recently partnered the Stars of the Industry Awards-2011, held  in Mumbai. Conceptualized more than 40 years ago, these awards are known to be a platform for recognizing performance par excellence across diverse sectors of Manufacturing, IT-ITES, FMCG and Education. This year a new category, Excellence in Banking and Financial Service, was introduced by Stars of the Industry Group and sponsored by 94.3 MY FM to appreciate individuals and businesses that are considered the backbone for brand success stories.

Speaking on the occasion, Harrish M. Bhatia, CEO, 94.3 MY FM said It's an honor for us to have partnered with awards of such high stature. Through these awards we have taken the opportunity to felicitate organizations from the banking and financial industry  These awards are a stupendous platform to salute the hard work, passion and the immense creative talent of the industry experts....

Awards for Excellence in Banking, Life Insurance, Credit Card Business, Online Demat, Money transfer, Home Loan Banking, Consumer Loan, Education Loan, Agricultural Loan and Excellence in SME Loan were announced, and these honored A K Garg (Chief General Manager) SBI,  Tirathraj Mendiratta (Secretary  CC) from LIC,  Abhik Banerjee (Associate VP) HSBC,  Bhupendra Chaudhary (Marketing Head) Reliance Money Securities, Kapil Pandey (Marketing Head) Western Union Money, Bhaskar Niyogi ( CGM Personal Banking) SBI, Rajesh Chakrabarti (VP Marketing) Reliance Consumer Finance, Sudhir Zade (General Manager Retail Banking & Marketing) Bank of India,  Rakesh Singh (Chairman) NABARD and V S Rathod (Executive Director) SIDBI respectively.

Others who were honoured included Vijay D Vala, (Asst General Manager Corporate Communication) Union Bank of India (Business Leadership Award); Asif Amin, (Head Marketing ) Reliance Mutual Fund and Vindhya Ramesh ( Deputy General Manager) BOB Finance (Brand Leadership Award).

In special categories, Ravi Varanasi (Senior VP) National Stock Exchange of India bagged Jury's Special Award and Bapu Ganesh (General Manager - Retail Banking) Central Bank of India scooped the Retail Leadership Award.

Star Youth Icon Award was presented to topline executives of the trade like Akshay Mehortra (CMO) Bajaj Allianz, Sanjay Tripathi (Executive VP Marketing) HDFC Life, Jaideep Bhattacharya (CMO) UTI Asset Management, Sujith Ganguly (CBCG Head) ICICI Bank, Ashish Kaul (Group Head) ICICI Direct and Kubeir Khera (Head Marketing) India Bulls.

In an additional category, the Indy's Brand Leadership Award was presented to Prabhat Sharma (Marketing Head) ICICI HFL and to S K Jain (GM Account – Retail & Banking) Dena Bank.

According to an official communication, the Stars of the Industry Awards are judged on the basis of size and growth in revenue and employees, quality, and diversity of clients and evidence of quality, competence and management capabilities. These awards are fashioned to honor individuals and organizations that best symbolize the quality service of the industry and to enhance values that will set iconic leadership and orient people to that leadership. The award aims to set standards andbenchmarks of very high order and encourage other to emulate.