Management Team

Anand Deshpande is the Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Persistent Systems (BSE & NSE: PERSISTENT), a Company that he founded in 1990. Anand has a B. Tech (1984) in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, a Masters (1986) and a Ph.D. (1989) in Computer Science from Indiana University, Bloomington (USA).

Anand worked as MTS at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California from 1989 to 1990.

At Persistent, he is responsible for overall leadership and management of the company and drives the sales and technology efforts.

As an active member of the database community Anand was responsible for hosting VLDB 1996 in Mumbai and ICDE 2003 in Bangalore. He has actively participated in program committees of international conferences like member of Industrial Program Committee: VLDB 2003 in Berlin, VLDB 2004 in Toronto, IEEE 2005, ICDE 2005 in Tokyo, VLDB 2007 in Vienna; Program Committee Chair for Annual Convention CSI 2009 in Pune; General Chair for COMAD 2008 in Mumbai; Industrial Program Committee Chair for DASFAA 2008 in New Delhi; Organizing Committee Chair for ISEC 2009 in Pune; launched the ACM India Council, 2009.

Anand is also a member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Institution of Engineers (India), Computer Society of India. He is currently a member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) India Council as a Past President, member of the Executive Committee of NASSCOM, serves on the Board of Trustees of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council of the School of Informatics of Indiana University and is on the Executive Committee of MCCIA. In the past, Anand was the President of SEAP from 2005-07 and Chairman of the Pune Chapter of CSI from 2003-05 and was the Chairman of CII, Pune Zonal council in 2009-10.

In recognition of his contribution to the Information Technology sector he was awarded the Entrepreneur Award at the Brihan Maharashtra Mandal Convention held in Atlanta, USA, 2005. He is the recipient of the CSI Fellowship Award in 2007 for outstanding achievement in the field of Information Technology. He was awarded the career achievement award of the School of Informatics at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2009 and serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council of the School of Informatics of Indiana University.

As the President of Persistent Systems Inc., Hari is responsible for Persistent's Global Sales, Marketing and Business Development efforts and continue to position Persistent as a leader in Outsourced Product Development. He also heads up the operations of the Persistent USA subsidiary.

Hari brings with him over 22 years of strong experience primarily in the telecom, wireless, broadband, convergence, and professional services. Prior to Persistent he was the SVP of Worldwide Field Operations at Openwave Systems heading the global sales, services, and support. Hari also served as the President and CEO of Longboard, SVP of Global Sales and Marketing for Littlefeet, and CEO of Penbase. He worked with Lucent Technologies where he was the Vice President and Manager of the EMEA region heading up a $2.5B operation. Hari has extensive background in scaling organizations dramatically to the next level. He has spent considerable amount of time living in diverse regions such as North America, EMEA, and Latin America and has developed global business and operations with carriers and channels.

Hari attended the executive management program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He holds an MS in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He also received an MBA from the University of Louisiana, Monroe and a BS in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Nitin Kulkarni brings in over 20 years of experience delivering business solutions in various capacities in companies such as Persistent Systems, Infosys, Siemens Information Systems Ltd, and NELCO ( a TATA company). Nitin has played a variety of roles in his career including CxO roles, heading offshore development centers, driving integration of companies post M&A, strategic account management and heading quality process teams. Currently, Nitin is the COO of Persistent Systems, a $200M+ company in the Product Development Services space. He is also the Executive Director on the board of Persistent.

Knowledge of formulation and implementation of operational strategies in the area of IT is one of Nitin’s key forte. He is a strong operations person and has repeatedly demonstrated operational excellence in his various roles.

Nitin is well versed with strategy implementation models like Malcolm Balridge and Process Models like CMMi, CMM, ISO. He is keen follower of Agile practices in software development as well as techniques like Six Sigma. Nitin has extensive experience of implementing governance models and KPI’s and Balanced Score Card for organizations and business units.

He is also a keen follower of technology and is deeply involved in initiatives around technology areas of Cloud Computing, Analytics, Social and Moblity.

Nitin is very passionate about HR and has won awards for people and talent management. He likes to drive innovations in HR and has worked extensively in bringing innovation to Organization Development and Performance Management Systems.

Nitin has earned a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering in Electronics from Mumbai University in 1988 and a Master's Degree in Engineering in Electronics from VNIT, Nagpur University in 1991.

Mritunjay Singh (Munjay) is the Joint Chief Operating Officer at Persistent systems. Munjay brings over 20 years of experience primarily in the Financial Service and Insurance, Retail and Manufacturing industries. Munjay has played multiple roles in areas such as Account Management, Delivery Management and Development Center Management across companies such as Infosys, Kanbay, S3C and Tata Steel. He has a wide range of experience, both in startups and large companies in India and abroad.

Prior to Persistent Systems, Munjay had the dual role of Development Center Head for a 26,000+ people center in Pune and Delivery Head of the Financial Services ADM unit managing a $400+ Million business spread globally. Munjay established the Singapore Development Center and was credited with winning the company's first large outsourcing contract in 2004. He has been instrumental in formulating key policies for the organization. Munjay also led the Hinjewadi Industry Association in Pune for many years as President, working very closely with government to bring about systemic development to the high-tech area.

Mritunjay has a Bachelor's Degree in Technology in Electronics & Communications from IIT BHU, Varanasi.

As the CTO of Persistent Systems, Venki is responsible for the technology roadmap of the company, covering high-end technology consulting business, innovation, learning and competency development and IP-related investments. He joined Persistent in 2002 and has undertaken various roles over the years, including that of Head of Telecom Business and Strategic Initiatives around BI/Analytics, Cloud Computing, Enterprise Collaboration and Mobility & Embedded Systems. Prior to Persistent, he worked for 7 years as a researcher at Bell Laboratories and also at the CTO office at Lucent Technologies.

Venki has earned his B.Tech (1988) and M.Tech (1992) in Computer Science from IIT Bombay and has a PhD in Computer Science from Washington State University (1997). His PhD Research focus was on Multicast Routing Protocols. He holds multiple patents in the area of ATM Multicasting, and has authored numerous research papers that have been published in reputed journals and conferences.

As head of New Business Initiatives and Portfolio at Persistent, Ranga is responsible for the overall business growth from new initiatives and positioning of Persistent as a global leader in software services and solutions for Cloud Computing, Enterprise Collaboration, Analytics and Enterprise Mobility segments.

Ranga Puranik brings with him strong global experience in software, telecom, enterprise and global product development having worked with GE, Motorola and Sasken in various leadership roles over the past 20 years. Prior to joining Persistent, Ranga was Senior Vice President at Sasken for the past 3 1/2 years where he joined as Chief Strategy Officer and then was named Head of the business unit for a team of 1500+ in the Network Solutions group. In one of his roles as head of the North America region for Sasken, he was responsible for driving sales growth across all of Sasken’s portfolio through installed base of customers and strategic new customer accounts.

Prior to Sasken, Ranga worked at Motorola and GE for over fifteen years in senior management & leadership roles in areas of telecom, healthcare, and software segments. This included General Manager & Managing Director designate, Motorola India Electronics Ltd, Bangalore; Director of Advanced Technology Business and Senior Director of Global R&D Strategy and Operations at Motorola's Networks division in Chicago; and as General Manager and head of Global Software Operations at GE Medical Systems in Milwaukee. Ranga has represented companies in analyst briefings, investor and industry conferences and board meetings. While at Motorola and GE, Ranga was involved in several strategic M&A initiatives and led large geographically distributed teams of several hundreds of engineers. Prior to joining Motorola in 1991, Ranga worked as lead software engineer and project manager in PSI Data Systems and Aeronautical Development Agency in India.

Ranga holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Chicago and a Bachelor of Engineering - Electronics & Communication from Karnatak University.

As Chief Innovation Officer of Persistent Systems, Dr. Sridhar Jagannathan is responsible for leading products, solutions and services advancement at the company.

Based in Santa Clara, CA, Sridhar brings with him over 17 years of experience in software engineering, strategy and technology ventures from Intuit, Symantec, Softbank and Oracle. He is a recognized industry veteran, technology strategist and entrepreneur.

Prior to Persistent, Sridhar served as Vice President, CTO Office at Intuit, Inc., where he was responsible for leading Intuit's technology strategy, global engineering and technology M&A diligence. Other leading positions held include Managing Director for Symantec's India Development Center for consumer products, Vice President of Technology for Softbank Emerging Markets and Technical Director for Internet & eCommerce at Oracle Corporation.

Sridhar is the author of 'The Cyber Mafia' (Amazon, 2012) and 'Internet Commerce Metrics and Models (Prentice Hall, 2001). He has taught courses at Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley and IIT, Madras.

He holds a Doctorate in Engineering from University of California, Berkeley, a Master's degree (Sloan Fellow) from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and B.Tech (Hons) from IIT, Kharagpur. Sridhar is also a Charter Member of TiE Silicon Vallley.

Nara Rajagopalan, Chief Product Officer, Persistent Systems is responsible for expanding the company's intellectual property (IP) and product portfolio business. Nara is a visionary, with the ability to grow business both organically and inorganically and create competitive differentiation.

Nara Rajagopalan joins Persistent Systems from Altosian, a network management infrastructure firm where he was CEO and a co-founder. Prior to this, he was the Senior Vice President of Products at Openwave where he led the $300M per year product portfolio focused on mobile data mediation and communication infrastructure. In previous roles, Nara served as a Software CTO at Lucent Technologies and as Vice President of Engineering at CoSine Communications.

Nara's core strengths lie in managing businesses and product portfolios. He holds a master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Pune, India.

Mike brings extensive sales and marketing executive experience from his 30+ years with IBM. As Senior Vice President at Persistent, Mike is responsible for leading the IBM sales effort and is driving work to build the overall company value proposition and brand, executive level marketing messages and strategic marketing.

Mike has a deep understanding and knowledge of the industry with a strong record of executive leadership in various profiles. He was most recently Vice President of Marketing Programs with IBM's Systems and Technology Group. Mike also served as Vice President of Industry Marketing for servers and storage, Vice President of product marketing for IBM's Unix business, Brand Manager for desktop systems in the PC business and held various positions in sales primarily associated with large enterprises.

Mike is based in Austin, Texas.

As a Chief Financial Officer of the Company, Rohit is responsible for treasury, financial reporting, taxation and internal controls at Persistent Systems. Rohit has been with Persistent since 2001 and has held various important positions in Finance and Internal Audit departments.

Rohit has around 30 years of experience in the areas of corporate finance, accounts, international and domestic taxation and management accounting. He has worked with leading Indian and multinational IT companies such as Tata Unisys Ltd., L & T Infotech Ltd. and Syntel Software.

Rohit is an associate member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India as well as of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India. He is B.Com. (Hons) from the University of Mumbai and qualified Cost and Works Accountant.