Vishal Sikka
Vishal Sikka was born in Shajapur Madhya Pradesh in Punjabi family. His father worked as an officer in the Indian Railways. He completed his schooling from Rosary High School, Baroda. After graduating in computer engineering from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Sikka finished his BS in computer science from Syracuse University and his PhD in artificial intelligence from Stanford University in 1996.
Sikka started his professional career with worked at
Xerox's research at the Palo Alto Labs. He also founded two
companies named iBrain and Bodha.com, which were later acquired
by PatternRX and Peregrine Systems respectively. Sikka joined
Peregrine Systems as their area Vice-President for Platform
Technologies. In 2002 Sikka joined SAP to head the advanced
technology group responsible for strategic innovative projects.
Later he was promoted to Senior Vice President of Architecture
and Chief Software Architect. By 2007, he was named the first
CTO of the company. He was one of the main architects in the
development process of HANA (High Performance Analytic
Appliance) which is one of the fasted selling SAP products in
recent times. On June 12, 2014 Sikka named as the CEO and MD of
Infosys Ltd, India's third-largest IT services exporter. His is
the person to take over the charge as first non-founder CEO in
the company's history.