Kris Gopalakrishnan

Senapathy “Kris” Gopalakrishnan is a trustee of Pratiksha Trust and a trustee of Pratithi Investment Trust. He is also the Chairman of Axilor Ventures, an accelerator that helps start-ups during the early stage of their business journey. As one of the co-founders of Infosys, Kris served as the vice chairman of Infosys from 2011 to 2014 and the chief executive officer and managing director of Infosys from 2007 to 2011. Recognised as a global business and technology thought leader, he was voted the top CEO in Institutional Investor's inaugural ranking of Asia's Top Executives and selected as one of the winners of the second Asian Corporate Director Recognition Awards by Corporate Governance Asia in 2011. He was elected president of India's apex industry chamber, the Confederation of Indian Industry, for 2013-14 and served as one of the co-chairs of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2014. In January 2011, the Government of India awarded Mr Gopalakrishnan the Padma Bhushan, the country’s third-highest civilian honour. Mr Gopalakrishnan is the Chairman of the Council, IISc Bangalore, and the Board of Governors of IIIT, Bangalore. He is the Chairman of the Vision Group on Information Technology of the Karnataka Government, the Chairman of Reserve Bank of India Innovation Hub and the Chairman of CII Centre of Excellence in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Start-ups. He is chairman of the Mission Governing Board of National Mission on Cyber Physical Systems, which has set up 24 Technology Innovation Hubs across IITs/IISc.

Gopalakrishnan is the chairman of Itihaasa Research and Digital, which publishes the history of the Indian IT industry on the “itihaasa” microsite as well as reports on industrial and academic research in India. He is the Co-author of “Against All Odds – The IT Story of India”. Mr Gopalakrishnan invests in promoting research on Brain sciences and age-related disorders, as well as investing in start-ups and the start-up ecosystem. Gopalakrishnan holds master’s degrees in physics and computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Kris is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE) and an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE) of India. He has been conferred honorary doctorates by IIT Kanpur, the University of Kerala, and VTU, Belagavi, Karnataka, and is a Lifetime Fellow of IIT Kharagpur.