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 IEEE, IE (India), CSI and YPO. He is currently the co-convener for Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) India Council, member of the Executive Committee of NASSCOM, 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 is the Chairman of CII, Pune zonal council 2008-09.

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.

Mr. Nitin Kulkarni is the Chief Operating Officer of Persistent Systems Limited. He 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. Prior to joining Persistent Systems Limited in 2006, he worked with NELCO, Mumbai from 1991 to 1992 as a Senior Systems Engineer. He subsequently worked with Siemens Information Systems Limited from October 1992 to February 1996 as a Senior Systems Analyst and with Infosys Technologies Limited between May 1996 to November 2006 in various roles in two tranches ranging from Project Manager to Assistant Vice President and Development Center Head.

Mr. Nitin Kulkarni is now designated as an ‘Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer’ of the Company.

Dr. Srikanth Sundararajan, Worldwide Head of Corporate Strategy and Technology and previously, Chief Operating Officer of Persistent Systems, Ltd, amassed more than 25 years of innovative international IT experience with Hewlett-Packard (HP), Informix, and his own successful startup(s), HCL Technologies, and Cognizant Tech Solutions.

During this tenure at HP, he was part of the original team that architected and implemented the first IDE on Unix for C/C++/Cobol called SoftBench. This core technology was licensed by industry leaders such as IBM, CDC, Informix, and Honeywell-Bull.

Srikanth founded Pretzel Logic, a wining software product services business and, over a nine-year period, provided design/architecture/implementation consulting expertise to companies like SUN, SGI, HP, and SAIC; registering triple digit growth six straight years and gaining recognition as one of the Top 100 Private Companies in the Bay Area three years in a row. His firm was acquired in 2001 by a BEA Systems Inc spin off.

Srikanth was also the Chief Technical Officer of HCL responsible for delivery and all strategic technology initiatives. He was responsible for the consolidation of the services revenue stream and technology initiatives between the HCL group companies. Srikanth then transitioned to became the worldwide CTO for Cognizant, where he drove all technology initiatives for customers and provided a technology roadmap for competitive advantage.

Srikanth was also responsible for setting up and driving worldwide product development for International Decision Systems, a financial services product company.

At Persistent Systems, Srikanth spent the first 4 years of his tenure as the company’s COO, leading the worldwide operations and technology initiatives; he established industry best practices in the areas of Cloud Computing, Mobility, Analytics, and Collaborations Today these domains are recognized as the building blocks for the company’s future and contribute to a significant portion of Persistent’s revenues.

In 2010, Srikanth successfully launched a course on Cloud Computing at Virgina Tech which was aimed at CIO’s, professors and ISV’s; versions of this course have been abbreviated into shorter versions for the Enterprise customers.

Srikanth earned a B.Tech degree from IIT Madras, and attained his MS and PhD in Computer & Information Sciences from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has made innumerable contributions to conferences over the years, and is also the holder of patent(s).

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 the Head of Persistent Labs, T M Vijayaraman is responsible for contributing technical insights from a customer-facing perspective and guiding the delivery organization in investing for the future. Prior to this, Vijayaraman served as the Chief Technical Officer at Persistent.

Vijayaraman brings over three decades of professional experience in architecting, designing and building systems. He not only has a deep specialization in databases, but also a wide exposure to different technologies, languages and systems.

Prior to joining Persistent, he was at the National Centre for Software Technology, Mumbai and had actively participated in designing many of its technology education programs. He had also been an active member of various eminent Database Communities and served on the program committees of several notable international conferences.

Vijayaraman holds a post-graduate degree in Computer Science from IIT Chennai and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Calicut.

As the Chief Finance Officer at Persistent Systems Limited, Rajesh Ghonasgi is responsible for managing all the financial activities at Persistent - financial risks of the business, financial planning and record-keeping, as well as financial reporting to higher management.

Rajesh has over 20 years of experience in leading technology companies, handling Finance and Legal functions, as well as other cross-functional activities across companies such as Wipro, Deutsche Software and ICICI Venture Funds Management and Hexaware Technologies.

At Wipro Technologies, he was involved in Legal and Taxation activities in addition to Finance. At Hexaware, Rajesh led in implementing new processes and focused on optimization efforts in taxation and writing SEZ strategy. He was instrumental in raising growth capital, was an integral part of the acquisition team, and successfully worked on their global acquisitions. Prior to Hexaware, Rajesh worked with Deutsche Software and ICICI Venture as the Chief Finance Officer and Company Secretary.

Rajesh is a qualified Chartered Accountant (FCA), Cost Accountant (ICWA) and a Company Secretary (CS). Additionally, Rajesh is a certified Black Belt on Transactional Quality, Six Sigma Methodology, by Motorola University. He has been cited for excellence and awarded for his outstanding effort towards quality improvement.

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.

Hemant is our Chief Planning Officer and heads Corporate Planning and MIS. He earned B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1985. He then earned an M.S. in 1988, M.Phil. in 1990 and Ph.D. in 1996, all in Computer Science from Rutgers University, New Jersey. Hemant worked with Siemens Corp Research, Princeton, New Jersey as a Member of Technical Staff from 1989 to 1991. He subsequently worked as a Scientist at the Tata Research Development and Design Center of Tata Consultancy Services Limited in Pune, India from 1991 to 2000. He worked earlier with Persistent from 2000 to 2006 as Senior Vice President. He worked with Persistent Systems, Inc. from 2006 to 2008 as Senior Vice President - Strategic Relationship Management before returning to Persistent Systems Ltd as Executive Vice President to head our Enterprise Products and Solutions Business Unit.

Venki has over 19 years of experience in Software industry, mainly in the Telecom domain. As the head of the Telecom BU at Persistent Systems he is responsible for the Telecom Centers of Excellence, all new business activities and championing key Technology Initiatives. Prior to Persistent, he worked for 7 years as a researcher at Bell Laboratories as well as the CTO office at Lucent Technologies.

Venki has earned his BTech and MTech in CS from IIT Bombay and has a PhD in Computer Science from Washington State University. His PhD Research focus was on Multicast Routing Protocols. He also hlolds multiple patents in the area of ATM Multicasting, and has authored numerous research publications in reputed conferences and journals.

Other than to Mobile and Wireless, his areas of interest include Multicast Routing & Signaling, VoIP and IP QoS.

Vivek is our Company Secretary, Head – Legal, Investor Relations and Compliance Officer. He earned a Bachelor's Degree in Commerce from Bombay University in 1995 and a Bachelor's degree in Law from Pune University in 2001. He is an Associate member of the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India and a Fellow member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India. He also passed Chartered Secretary exam the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, UK in the year 2002. He was an elected member on the Managing Committee of Western India Regional Council of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India for the period 2007-2010. Prior to joining our Company in 2000, he worked with Siemens Limited from 1995 to 1996 as a cost trainee, with Bombay Dyeing and Manufacturing Co. Limited in 1997 as an executive - cost and with Kirloskar Pneumatic Company Limited from November 1997 to December 1999 in various positions including assistant company secretary. He holds overall responsibility for legal, compliance, governance investor relations and corporate secretarial matters.