S. Gopalakrishnan

Senapathy Gopalakrishnan, known universally as Kris, was born in 1955 and studied physics at the University of Kerala before earning a master's in computer science from IIT Madras. At Patni Computer Systems, he worked on software development and client delivery, building the technical credibility that the founding team needed to win early contracts. Kris was the most technically oriented of the founders — he understood that Infosys could not compete on cost alone and needed to build genuine engineering depth, quality systems, and innovation capability to avoid being seen as a low-cost staffing agency.

S. Gopalakrishnan co-founded Infosys in 1981 and served as CEO from 2007 to 2011, navigating the company through the global financial crisis while maintaining profitability and client trust. His tenure emphasized technology investment, global delivery expansion, and operational resilience. Before becoming CEO, he served as COO and was responsible for building much of Infosys' technology infrastructure and delivery capability. After stepping down as CEO, he served as executive vice chairman until 2014. Kris later became president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and has been active in promoting research, innovation, and entrepreneurship in India. His lasting influence on Infosys is the belief that process discipline and engineering depth must advance together — delivery scale without technical renewal eventually becomes commodity work.