Sanjiv Sidhu

In 1980, Sidhu graduated from Osmania University, Hyderabad, earning a bachelor of science degree in Chemical Engineering. He then moved to the United States and attended Oklahoma State University, earning a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering in 1982. Sidhu also did graduate work in systems and control engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Sidhu has focused his career on helping large organizations consistently achieve superior results via improved planning and execution of plans. Based on the belief that businesses react too slowly to rapidly changing conditions, his concentration has been on helping organizations implement new processes to boost agility and adaptability. Several global corporations have implemented his methodology. With o9 Solutions, Sidhu is continuing to innovate new methodologies to optimize decision making and provide value to large organizations.

Prior to starting o9, Sidhu founded and served as chairman of i2 Technologies, which revolutionized the field of supply chain management. i2 began in Sidhu's apartment in 1988 after he left his role as an engineer in the artificial intelligence lab at Texas Instruments where he was researching the feasibility and commercial applicability of a systematic approach to solving complex linear programming models. He was joined by Ken Sharma, formerly of the Goldratt Institute, with whom he worked at Texas Instruments. Their initial product became known as Factory Planner, and is still optimizing production in companies around the world.

i2 Technologies went public in 1996, and at his peak Sidhu's personal stake in i2 hit a high of $6.5 billion; Forbes listed him as the 109th richest person in the world in 2001.[2] At that point, he was considered the richest person of Indian origin in the world. In 2000, Sidhu was awarded the Non-Resident Indian of the Year by the Indian government.