From aspiring doctor to Infosys CEO: Kris Gopalakrishnan calls it a day

Senapathy ‘Kris’ Gopalakrishnan wouldn’t even have ended up as an engineer, let alone the CEO of Infosys, if he had got two marks more in an exam. Buttoday, after overthree decades in one ofIndia’s largest softwarecompanies, thesoft-spoken former CEOis set to call it a day. Gopalakrishnan stepped down as executive vice chairman on 14 June, however, continued on the board till October 10 as non-executive vice chairman.

The 59-year-old wasn’t destined to be a software engineer at the outset. The Trivandrum resident, who hails from a family that mainly consists of teachers, was pushed by his parents to be a doctor but was devastated after he failed to get through by just two marks, he revealed in an interview published in Forbes India.

“It devastated my family. It devastated me. After that incident, my parents never, ever influenced me in anything I ever did,” he said.

Since he hadn’t even applied for an engineering course, Gopalakrishnan took up physics for his graudation but was to court disappointment again after he got through the entrance exam for the Indian Institute of Management but didn’t clear the interview. He then went on to get his masters degree in physics and a M Tech from IIT Madras, which then landed him his first job in Patni Computer Services in 1979. Within a couple of years, he rose to being an assistant project manager at the company.

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In 1981, when six other from Patni Computer Services were on their way out, Gopalakrishnan decided to abandon his relatively secure position to join them in starting Infosys, which famously began its operations in the living room of NR Narayana Murthy’s house.

He rose within the company to become the Chief Operating officer of the company in 2002 after almost two decades there and after a year-long stint as joint managing director of Infosys, Gopalakrishnan was appointed the CEO and managing director in 2007.

His tenure reportedly started well with revenue growing 35 percent year-on-year for the 2008 fiscal and Infosys made the biggest private sector dividend payout in the corporate history of India. The company also made the biggest overseas IT acquisition among Indian corporates at the time by acquiring British consultancy Axon.

Despite the financial crisis of 2008, Infosys remained stable under Gopalakrishnan, continuing to maintain profits. However, it saw revenue growth decline as rivals like TCS and Wipro did better.

“We were as responsive as we could be. We continued our global expansion strategy, we continued to invest in people and in new campuses,” Gopalakrishnan was quoted as saying in a Times of India report.

In 2011, Gopalakrishnan made way for SD Shibulal to take over as the company’s next CEO as he became the company’s executive co-chairman between August 2011 and May 2013. He then became the executive vice chairman of the company effective from 1 June 2013 while holding additional responsibility for IBPO and Finacle operations.

A technophile with a fondness for mobile phones and laptops, Gopalakrishnan, who has received the Padma Bhushan, has also been involved in philanthropy and recently gave $35 million to Indian Institute of Science for brain research. He also recently became the first Infosys co-founder to join the Indian Angel Network.

Active on Twitter but keeping his own views to a minimum, Gopalakrishnan hasn’t hinted at anything that he plans to do after spending multiple decades atInfosys but giventhe silence he has maintained over all his projects so far, it hardly comes as a surprise.