Deepak Bhagat is one of the most respectable alumni of the Institute who has played a pivotal role in forging strong ties between the Institute and its alumni. He is one of the founding members of the IITK Foundation that raises funds for the Institute in the USA. He is also the founder of the west-coast chapter of the IITK Alumni Association in Silicon Valley and takes an active interest in mentoring and helping young alumni.
Mr. Bhagat is a high technology leader with over 45 years of diverse experience of working in Silicon Valley. Throughout his career, he has worked with some of the biggest technologies and products that have set industry directions and generated billions of dollars in revenues. In 2001, IIT Kanpur conferred upon him the Distinguished Alumnus Award in recognition of his outstanding managerial skills and his contributions towards building institute-alumni relationships of a high order.
Deepak Bhagat received his B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1973 from IIT Kanpur and further went on to complete his Masters in Science with specialization in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland in 1977.
In 1979, he started his career with Hewlett-Packard as an R&D Engineering Manager and went on to stay with the company for 14 years. He was a key contributor to HP's transition to a precision architecture based commercial system (HP 3000 900 series) in various engineering and technical marketing management capacities. Additionally, he contributed to HP's personal computer product strategy and led the company's joint development programs with Microsoft and Novell. In 1993, he joined Sun Microsystems as a Senior Director of Engineering and made key contributions to strategy, technology roadmaps, system software, architecture, acquisitions, technology evaluation, and partnerships for several programs such as Solaris/Ultrasparc Systems, Sun N1 Grid Management Engine, and others. He is also the co-founder of Sun India Engineering Center in Bangalore and played a key role in initiating Sun's collaborative research with IITs in India. He was also a member of President Clinton's entourage that came to India in March 2000. From 2007 to 2012, he acted as the Founding Principal of Vikroon Systems Inc. and provided high-end consulting to several high profile clients including Cisco, Huawei, and BMC in the areas of Data Center Infrastructure and Management products. Mr. Bhagat is currently a Vice President at SAP in the Cloud Architecture and Engineering Group.
Mr. Bhagat has also been involved with several Start-ups working in the areas of data center infrastructure and automation, cloud services, and mobile. For instance, he led the development of a data center automation and service provisioning platform as the CEO and VP of Engineering at a very early stage startup Centrata Inc. Besides working with the Start-ups, he is also a core member of the TiE Angels group, one of the largest and most active Angels group in Silicon Valley.
