Mittu Sridhara CIO50 2009

Mittu Sridhara is group CIO at Ladbrokes plc, the betting and gaming giant that takes up to 10 million bets each week and more than £16bn in stakes each year.

He has held a number of roles focusing on growing or transforming businesses, enabled by technology, high-performance teams and making the customer central to the business.

Before Ladbrokes he was VP, product marketing and IT at Sabre Holdings, responsible for product strategy and delivery as well as integrating technology acquisitions at the company that provides IT services to the travel industry and has brands including Travelocity and lastminute.com.

Sridhara returned to Sabre - which he initially worked for in a number of senior IT roles in the US - from car rental group Avis where he was European CIO and a member of the executive leadership team, reporting directly to the CEO with a €75m profit and loss responsibility and a global investment budget of €55m.

At Avis, Sridhara transformed the company's global technology function across 117 countries, including China, and delivered IT programmes that improved Avis Europe's operational and distribution capabilities.

Prior to Avis, Sridhara was CIO at a European broadband joint venture called VersaPoint, where he built the IT teams and business platforms.