Nasscom names Fractal’s Srikanth Velamakanni as chairman

NOIDA: India’s technology industry has a new ringmaster. Nasscom, the apex body for a sector worth $250bn, has handed the chairperson’s gavel to Srikanth Velamakanni, co-founder and group chief executive of Fractal Analytics, a man who has spent decades teaching machines to think so that enterprises do not have to.

Velamakanni succeeds Sindhu Gangadharan, managing director of SAP Labs India, who exits after completing her term in April 2026. He is no stranger to Nasscom’s inner workings, having served on its executive council for over six years and occupied the vice chairperson’s seat before his elevation. Alongside the transition, Kishor Patil, co-founder, chief executive and managing director of KPIT Technologies, has been elected as the new vice chairperson.

The appointment follows Nasscom’s standard governance cycle, which rotates the chairperson and vice chairperson roles among senior industry leaders. But the timing is anything but routine.

Velamakanni’s credentials for the role are formidable. An alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad, he co-founded Fractal at a time when artificial intelligence and analytics were barely part of the mainstream business conversation in India, and has since built it into a global AI and decision sciences company serving enterprise clients across retail, financial services, healthcare and technology. Fractal recently listed on the BSE and NSE after raising Rs 2,834 crore through an IPO, giving India’s AI story a rather satisfying stock-market subplot. His career before Fractal was equally rooted in analytics and consulting, with a particular focus on data science-led business models within India’s IT services ecosystem.

At Nasscom, he has long been a fixture in discussions on emerging technologies, digital transformation and innovation-led growth, contributing to the body’s governance and policy advisory structures. He has also been a voice in India’s AI policy circles and national security discussions, useful credentials at a moment when sovereign AI has become something of a geopolitical obsession.

The agenda he inherits is punishing: accelerate AI-led services transformation, build India into a global hub for agentic and multi-agent AI systems, deepen semiconductor and AI infrastructure capabilities, and somehow produce a workforce that can keep pace with all of the above.

Velamakanni struck a characteristically measured note. “AI progress is unlocking unprecedented opportunities for enterprises, large and small, to reimagine their businesses,” he said, with the quiet confidence of a man who has been making precisely this argument since before it was fashionable.

Nasscom president Rajesh Nambiar described him as a rare combination of entrepreneurial drive and AI depth. Gangadharan, for her part, was gracious in departure. “I am confident that Srikanth will take this agenda to its next stage of impact,” she said.

The baton has passed to a man who helped write the playbook on AI in India. The pressure, as ever in tech, is entirely on.