Vishal Sikka

Early life and career

Sikka was born in Shajapur Madhya Pradesh to Punjabi parents, an officer in the Indian Railways and a teacher. His family moved to Vadodara in Gujarat, India when he was six. He did his mid high school in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Rajkot. He graduated from Rosary High School. Sikka joined the bachelors in computer engineering course at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, which he discontinued to go to Syracuse University in New York where he earned a B.S. in computer science. Sikka completed his Ph.D. in 1996 from Stanford University. His dissertation was titled Integrating Specialized Procedures into Proof Systems and his thesis advisor was Michael Genesereth.

Marvin Minsky, one of the fathers of AI, wrote recommendation letter for Sikka for his admission to Stanford. John McCarthy also known as [another] father of AI was one of Sikka's teacher.

After a brief stint at Xerox's research labs, Sikka founded iBrain which competed at the time with Business Objects. iBrain was acquired by PatternRX, Inc. His second startup, Bodha.com, focused on developing technology for non-invasive, service-based integration of enterprise applications and information. Sikka joined Peregrine Systems as their area Vice-President for Platform Technologies, responsible for application development and integration technologies and architecture, following their acquisition of Bodha.com.

SAP

Sikka joined SAP in 2002 to head up the advanced technology group responsible for strategic innovative projects. Later he was promoted to Senior Vice President of Architecture and Chief Software Architect, responsible for the road map and the direction for the architecture of SAP products and infrastructure.

In April 2007, Sikka was named SAP's first-ever CTO reporting to then CEO Henning Kagermann. At the time, SAP spokesman Frank Hartmann stated that SAP felt it needed a CTO to oversee some broad changes that were under way at the company, including its renewed focus on the mid-market, the introduction of new on-demand products, and the continued roll out of NetWeaver and its SOA strategy.

In the wake of Léo Apotheker's resignation from the executive board in 2010 to become CEO of HP, Sikka was named to a newly-reconstituted board, along with new co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe.

On 4 May 2014, Sikka announced his departure from SAP for personal reasons before being named leader of Infosys.

Infosys

On 12 June 2014, Infosys Ltd, India's second-largest IT services exporter, named Sikka as its Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Sikka took over from then-CEO S.D. Shibulal, one of Infosys' founders, on 1 August. He was inducted as a whole-time director of the Board and CEO & MD (Designate) of Infosys on 14 June. His annual compensation was set at $13 million and stock options worth $9million.Vishal Sikka resigned from Infosys as MD & CEO on 18 August 2017 will be holding position of Executive Vice Chairman until a replacement is found.

Additional background

In 2008, Sikka joined the executive board of the CTO Forum, an influential industry non-profit community. The same year, he articulated his vision of 'Timeless Software' – software that does not cause disruption to the user as technology landscapes evolve – and proposed that this be a key pillar of SAP's future development efforts. He has expressed his admiration for industry visionary Alan Kay and contributed a chapter to Points of View, a tribute on Kay's 70th birthday. Sikka served as a member of the advisory board for Coghead from 2006 to 2009 along with industry influencers Steve Bourne, Guy Kawasaki and John Seely Brown. Coghead was acquired by SAP in 2009.

Sikka has been an influential advocate for HANA, SAP's new In-memory database technology. He spearheaded the development of HANA since his appointment as CTO with support from Hasso Plattner. Since assuming his seat on the executive board, he has spoken on multiple occasions about the potential of HANA as a breakthrough in the enterprise software space.