Ashwin Upponi Vice President, Lennox India Technology Centre & Global Program Management

He leads the Lennox India operations which consist of Controls Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Information Technology, Finance and Human Resources. LITC operations support Corporate and the three business units of LII. In addition, as the PMO leader he is responsible for executing all aspects of IT projects, New Product Introduction (NPIs) and Material Cost Reduction (MCR) for the businesses with team members in Dallas and the Lennox Engineering and Sourcing Center in Shanghai, China. Prior to joining LII, he was with Trane/Ingersoll Rand as Director of Program Management. He also worked at General Electric in their Medical Systems, Information Systems and Transportation Systems divisions. While at GE he was in leadership roles spanning multiple functions, including Global Service Delivery, eBusiness, Six Sigma Black Belt, Marketing, Global Sourcing, Engineering, Quality and International Programs. He began his career as a manufacturing engineer at BAE Systems.

Hema Mani Regional Director, Human Resources

Hema Mani has over 25 years of experience in Strategic Human Resources Capacity, with wide ranging Multinational experiences from Kelly Consultants, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Jain Group of Institutions, i2 Technologies and Honeywell. She is a certified Korn Ferry Leadership Architect, Lean Sigma Green Belt assessor and certified OD facilitator. She is currently heading the Asia Pacific HR at Lennox International Inc., part of her responsibility in Lennox India & Asia sourcing leadership team, she spends considerable time in developing HR talent in the organization and developing them into a global team of excellence. She is committed to the cause of Diversity. She has recently launched the LGBTQ+ initiative at Lennox India. She is the current Chairwoman for CII-Indian Women Network in Chennai and part of her role she is focused on develop Leadership talent among women, Mentoring initiatives, Gender Parity diagnostics & facilitation in corporations and POSH activities. She is a member of the Board of XIME-Chennai and plays a vital role in developing the HR curriculum for the group. As part of XIME, she mentors and coaches young HR talent. She is recognized as one of the 30 Women Super Achievers by World HRD Congress.

A. Sowmyanarayanan Regional Director, Information Technology

Sowmyanarayanan is a qualified Cost Accountant from ICWAI & a graduate in Commerce from the University of Madras. With an enriching career of 30+ years with top notch clients (i.e Siemens & Hewlett Packard,) he has been instrumental in building the IT team in Lennox India closer to a decade. At HP, he led the Asia Pacific HP-IT team in Singapore for SAP Planning and Finance before relocating to Chennai. Prior to joining Lennox India, Sowmya was part of the Global Delivery organization in HP leading the SAP Practice in Chennai as well as managing a major consumer industry customer account.

He is a Strategic and Tactical Leader with strong footprints in managing multimillion-dollar IT organizations. He is an inspiring leader in building a strong & engaged workforce. His exposure and interests are being Outcome Driven/Offshoring/Outsourcing/SAP, eCommerce, Web, Mobile, Analytics & Infrastructure, etc.

Hanumakumar Oleti Director, Mechanical Engineering

Hanuma has over 20+ years of R&D Experience with strong techno commercial acumen in building top-notch design support teams globally for Automotive Thermal Systems Products, using innovative and agile transversal processes to work on new Technology thermal products by Mechanical, Hardware and Software systems integration.

His responsibilities at LITC include leading Design Engineering, Value Analysis & Value Engineering, Simulation Engineering – Finite Element Analysis & Computational Fluid Dynamics, System Modeling & India Innovation Lab at LITC.

Prior to joining with Lennox, he has worked as a Senior R&D Executive with global Tier 1 Organizations like Valeo, Denso, Subros, Visteon, Caterpillar and TVS in Product development, R&D Strategy, building competent teams for a captive low-cost technical center environment. He’s a qualified postgraduate engineer with “Master of Science by Research” in Fluid Mechanics from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras after completing “Bachelor of Technology” in Mechanical Engineering from Nagarujuna University.

Vidya Sagar B Zakkula Director, Controls Engineering

Vidya comes with over 23 years of proven hands-on leadership experience in building complex, versatile, end-to-end products with startups and large corporates like AMD, Intel, Phoenix, Imagination technologies, etc. He is a seasoned engineering leader, technologist, author, keynote speaker, and mentor. Vidya has demonstrated capabilities in building teams from scratch, defining mission/vision, charter, strategy, planning & execution of high-caliber teams across geos, and led them to be results-oriented. He authored many technical papers and has a few patents. His recently published book, "A to Z of Entrepreneurship", works as a handbook for entrepreneurs during their journey and helps get things done. He has strong domain expertise in embedded systems software, device drivers, server graphics virtualization, cloud computing, telecom, audio & video processing, mobile apps development, developer tools, automation frameworks, SAAS, e-commerce, and enterprise applications.

Prior to Lennox, Vidya was with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) for over a decade. He headed the global software integration team and infra tools. He built teams of AI/ML, VDI, GFX virtualization, and audio delivery teams.

Vidya did his B. Tech in Computer Science & Engineering from Sri Venkateswara University and Executive MBA from ICFAI School of Business.

Prabhu Jayachandran Regional Leader, Sourcing

Prabhu Jayachandran is a dynamic, accomplished senior executive who offers a solid background of experience leading large international multicultural Global Sourcing & Supply chain. A real global leader, who travelled to more than 10+ countries & handled domestic/international leadership roles. Extensive experience from Manufacturing, Low cost country sourcing, Supply chain, Quality Improvement Projects, Procure to Pay, Innovation programs, Unique supplier development, techno-commercials, fast growth business start-ups, Cost savings, Indirect/MRO sourcing & supply chain, developing new sourcing regions, transformation management, cash flow management, process improvements, restructuring and consolidation etc. He currently leads the India Region Sourcing & Supply chain initiative at Lennox India.

Vinod Goswami Regional Director, Finance

Vinod Goswami has over 15 years of experience in increasingly responsible roles within Finance in various global organizations. He has worked in Barclays Bank, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. Before his position in Lennox India, Vinod was the Vice President of Finance Department at Barclays Bank. He has done his graduation in Commerce and is a Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary by qualification; he also holds a Diploma in IFRS and is a member of ACCA (UK). As Director of Finance, Vinod is responsible for Finance and Shared Services teams at LITC.

Karthikeyan M Head, Corporate Services

He has over 16 years of experience in General Administration, Accounting, Facility Management, Security Operations, Vendor Management, Disaster Management, Cost Management, Travel Asset management, SLA Adherence and Team Management, Import and Export Compliance across IT and Technology Industries. A keen planner, strategist and implementer with deftness in handling day-to-day administrative activities in coordination with internal/ external departments for smooth business operations. Karthikeyan holds a Master’s in Business Administration from Annamalai University.