Kris Gopalakrishnan

Senapathy Gopalakrishnan, popularly known as Kris Gopalakrishnan, is Chairman of Axilor Ventures, a company supporting and funding startups, was former executive vice chairman (former co-chairman) of Infosys, a global consulting and IT services company based in India. He is also one of its seven founders.[2] He was elected as the president of India's apex industry chamber Confederation of Indian Industry for the year 2013-14.

Senapathy "Kris" Gopalakrishnan
Gopalakrishnan at the World Economic Forum on India in 2012
Born (1955-04-05) 5 April 1955
Thiruvanathapuram, Kerala, India
Alma materIndian Institute of Technology Madras (MSc. & M.Tech)
OccupationExecutive vice chairman, Infosys
Years active1981 – 2014
Net worthUS$2.3 billion (October 2019)[1]

Early days

Gopalakrishnan was born in Thiruvanathapuram on 5 April 1955 to a Nair family. He spent his school days in Government Model Boys Higher Secondary School, Thiruvanathapuram, Kerala.

Gopalakrishnan obtained an M.Sc. (physics) in 1977 and M.Tech. (computer science) in 1979, both from IIT, Madras. He started his career as a software engineer with Patni Computer Systems, Mumbai, in 1979.

Career

Infosys

In 1981, Gopalakrishnan co-founded Infosys with six other entrepreneurs. His initial years at Infosys included management of design, development, implementation and support of information systems for clients in the U.S. consumer products industry. From 1987 to 1994, Gopalakrishnan headed the technical operations of KSA/Infosys (a joint venture between Infosys and KSA in Atlanta, Georgia).

In 2007, Gopalakrishnan took over as CEO and managing director of Infosys Technologies Limited from Nandan Nilekani. During his 4-year tenure, Infosys' topline doubled to $6 billion. Gopalakrishnan previously served as chief operating officer (since April 2002), and as the president and joint managing director (since August 2006). His responsibilities included customer services, technology, investments and acquisitions. In August 2011, he handed over the responsibility of CEO and MD to his colleague and another co-founder of Infosys, S D Shibulal. He was later appointed executive vice-chairman of Infosys's board. He served as non-executive vice chairman of Infosys's board from 14 June till 10 October 2014.[3]

Other work

In 2014 Gopalakrishnan co-founded Axilor Ventures, a venture capital platform for young entrepreneurs.[4][5][6][7] He was also a keynote speaker at Consilience 2013, organised by National Law School of India University, Bengaluru on Legal Aspects of Cloud Computing.[8]

Positions

Gopalakrishnan is the chairman of the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore and vice chairman of the Board for Information Technology Education Standards (BITES) set up by the government of Karnataka. He was named as non-executive chairman of Jetsynthesys, a digital company headed by Rajan Navani [9] In April 2012, Gopalakrishnan was appointed as a member of the reconstituted United Nations Global Compact Board for three years. On 5 April 2013 he was elected as the president of the industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for the year 2013–14. He is a trustee of the Infosys Science Foundation and a member of ACM, IEEE and IEEE Computer Society, as well as the chief mentor of Startup Village.[10]

Awards

In 2011, Government of India awarded him with Padma Bhushan which is India's third highest civilian honor.[11] He was conferred with an honorary doctorate by University of Kerala in 2019.[12]

Philanthropy

Gopalakrishnan has contributed Rs. 225 crores (approximately US $40 million) to develop a Centre for Brain Research at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. He is the donor of the largest philanthropic gift ever received by the 105-year-old institute from an individual.[13] He has contributed an additional Rs. 60 crores (approximately US $10 million) to set up distinguished visiting chairs in Neurocomputing and Data Science at the Indian Institute of Science of Bengaluru and Indian Institute of Technology Madras of Chennai.[14]

References
  1. "The World's Billionaires". Forbes.com. Retrieved 14 October 2019.
  2. "Management Profile-Infosys". Infosys. Retrieved 16 July 2013.
  3. "Vishal Sikka to be CEO and MD of Infosys, Gopalakrishnan to be Non-Executive Vice-Chairman". news.biharprabha.com. Retrieved 12 June 2014.
  4. "Infy co-founders launch startup incubator Axilor Ventures - VCCircle". vccircle.com. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  5. "Axilor Ventures". vccircle.com. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  6. "Infosys co-founders launch Axilor Ventures to support entrepreneurship, innovation - Franchise India". franchiseindia.com. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  7. "Shibulal, Gopalkrishnan launch biz incubator Axilor Ventures". Deccan Herald. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  8. https://newsphilosophy.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/consilience-2013-conference-on-legal-issues-pertaining-to-cloud-computing-in-india/
  9. "Kris Gopalakrishnan named Non-Executive Chairman of JetSynthesys". Retrieved 24 September 2015.
  10. "Start-ups need to become household names: Kris Gopalakrishnan". The Economic Times. Archived from the original on 10 November 2013. Retrieved 29 October 2013.
  11. "Padma Awards Announced" (Press release). Ministry of Home Affairs. 25 January 2011. Retrieved 19 July 2013.
  12. "KU to confer honorary doctorates on Narlikar, Kris Gopalakrishnan". The Hindu. 21 August 2019. Retrieved 5 November 2020.
  13. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Infosys-co-founder-gives-IISc-Rs-225-crore/articleshow/29621344.cms
  14. "Infosys Co-founder Sets Up 3 Chairs at IISc With Rs 10 Crore Corpus". Retrieved 6 May 2016.
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