My wife calls me a fake Punjabi: Vishal Sikka, Infosys CEO

BANGALORE: The ways of Silicon Valley probably do rub off on those who interact with it closely. Dressed in a black tee and blazer, Vishal Sikka would have fit right into one of the thousands of conferences and launches held in the Valley every year. Only that the event Sikka attended on Thursday had much more significance.

Sikka, 47, a former member of German software giant SAP’s executive board, had been named CEO of Infosys and was interacting with the media at the company’s headquarters in Bangalore.

Though Sikka has been living abroad for the past two decades, he has not forgotten his Indian roots. “I am the son of a teacher and a railway engineer. For us Indians, it is a matter of great pride to be part of this company,” said Sikka, a PhD in computer science from Stanford University.


He is best known for developing SAP’s flagship analytic database platform HANA, which has since become the fastest in the company’s history to generate a billion dollars in revenue.

Born in Madhya Pradesh to Punjabi parents, Sikka’s family moved to Vadodara in Gujarat when he was six. He finished schooling at the Rosary High School in Vadodara.

Sikka later joined the bachelor course in computer science at MSU, Vadodara, which he discontinued to go to Syracuse University in New York where he earned a BS in computer science.

“Vishal was jovial, not studious but very smart,” said Arun Bali, who was Sikka’s batchmate at MSU. Sikka knew the subjects “in and out” and was always on “top of the class” is the consensus of most friends ET spoke to.

After getting his Phd in 1996, he started a technology company, iBrain, with his brother and later founded Bodha, a company that helps e-commerce systems connect with other applications. iBrain was acquired by PatternRX and Bodha by Peregrine Systems.

He joined SAP in 2002, where he was most recently in charge of all things products and innovation. In the past two years, many saw Sikka as a contender for the job of SAP CEO.

“I represent different cultures. My wife calls me a fake Punjabi,” said Sikka, who currently lives in California with his wife and children. While his job involves travelling extensively to markets such as Europe and India, Sikka said he plans to take up consulting faculty roles at Stanford — perhaps a reflection of his academic background.

Over the next six to seven weeks he is keen to meet all team leaders and spend time at the Infosys Leadership Institute in Mysore as he tries to understand India’s second-largest software outsourcing company better. “We are really looking forward to becoming a great leader in the IT industry by providing valuable services that can drive transformations,” he said while talking about his immediate plans.

Narayana Murthy, who will step down as the Infosys executive chairman on June 14, said what makes Sikka special is his scholarly background, adding that “a doctoral degree in computer science from Stanford is the highest honour one can get.” Murthy’s son and executive assistant, Rohan Murty, who will also step down from Infosys on June 14, is a junior fellow at Harvard University.

An avid blogger, Sikka has over 14,000 followers on Twitter. In his latest blogpost, Sikka said when he joined SAP 12 years ago, he sought inspiration from one of his favourite books, Hermann Hesse’s classic novel of self-discovery ‘Siddhartha’.