From South Bengaluru boy to Adobe CEO: Chakravarthy comes full circle

Bengaluru: From the familiar streets of South Bengaluru to the heart of Silicon Valley, Bengaluru boy Anil Chakravarthy’s journey to becoming Adobe CEO has a distinctly old-Bengaluru ring to it.Chakravarthy, who succeeds Shantanu Narayen as Adobe’s CEO after an 18-year run, grew up in South Bengaluru and studied at Sudarshan Vidya Mandir, Vijaya High School in Jayanagar and National College in Basavanagudi.Despite his global career, he still has a soft corner for Bengaluru’s old favourites, including Vidyarthi Bhavan — a taste of the Bengaluru he grew up in, long before the city became the tech capital it is today.Chakravarthy’s rise comes as Bengaluru and Karnataka continue to produce technology leaders taking prominent roles in global tech and AI companies. In recent months, Belagavi-born Sachin Katti moved from Intel, where he was CTO and AI chief, to OpenAI, where he is leading efforts around compute infrastructure. Rahul Patil, a PESIT Bengaluru alumnus, was appointed CTO of Anthropic, while Amar Subramanya, a Bangalore University alumnus, was named Apple’s vice-president of AI.Chakravarthy joined Adobe from Informatica, where he served as CEO from 2016. He joined the company in 2013 as executive vice-president and chief product officer, overseeing product development, management and marketing. A computer science engineer from the Institute of Technology, Varanasi, he holds an MS and PhD from MIT. He will join Adobe’s board when he assumes the CEO role on December 1.Under his leadership, Informatica went private following its $5.3-billion buyout and shifted towards cloud and subscription-based services.Former Cognizant CEO Francisco D’Souza, who also cofounded tech investment platform Recognize, told TOI, “I’ve known Anil for many years since his time at Informatica, and I’ve watched him make hard calls when the easy ones were still available. Every technology company right now is being asked to reinvent itself while the plane is in the air,”D’Souza said that the demands for a CEO have changed more in the last three years than in the previous fifteen. “Like Shantanu, Adobe’s next leader, needs to be able to hold two things at once: real conviction about the future of technology, and the humility to keep testing those convictions in the present. Anil is one of the few people I’d bet on to do both.”Before Informatica, Chakravarthy spent nearly a decade at Symantec, where he led information security, engineering and multiple product groups. Earlier, he headed enterprise security services at VeriSign and began his career at McKinsey & Company, eventually becoming co-leader of its e-business practice.Anand Deshpande, founder and CMD of Persistent Systems, said “I have known Anil for nearly three decades, from the time he was a young McKinsey consultant fresh out of MIT, and later when he led the Veritas development center in Pune. Throughout all these years, what has stood out is a rare combination — an incredibly sharp mind, a remarkably grounded personality, and genuine humility. Shantanu Narayen leaves very big shoes to fill, but someone must fill them. I cannot think of a better person than Anil to do so.”Nilesh Thakker, president at consulting firm Zinnov, said, “Adobe just told you the harder problem is turning AI into a business, not winning the model race.” He said Chakravarthy has done a version of this at Informatica, but the test was easier. Permira and CPPIB took it private in 2015. “He ran it for five years with no quarterly print. He gets none of that cover at Adobe, with the stock down every year since 2023. I’d back his product judgement. He knows what enterprise customers actually pay for. He just won’t get the runway he had at Informatica.”Get the latest Business News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.