Making it accessible

DHEERAJ Pandey is the quintessential US immigrant success story. He has achieved success by sheer dint of hard work, talent, and a risk-taking instinct. In 1997, when he was in his early 20s, he packed his bags, got on a plane, and flew to the United States to do a PhD. He never got the time to finish that doctorate as he plunged himself into the excitement of the bubble era IT industry in the US just before the start of the new millennium.

Twenty-three years later, now in his mid-forties, as the founder, chairman and CEO of enterprise cloud computing company Nutanix, he is a multi-millionaire. Mr Pandey's entrepreneurial spirit has been recognised in the IT industry - he has won several prestigious awards, like Dell's Founders 50, Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year, Silicon Valley, and made CRN's Top 25 Innovators lists in 2015-2016

The Nutanix CEO is not one to rest on his laurels. Despite the company (which he helped found) doing well and being recognised as one of the leaders within its market niche, he suddenly announced, a few days before this interview, his decision to retire from the CEO role, take a break, and then look for a new challenge.