Murali Vivekanandan

President Ideas2IT Technologies

Last Reviewed: September 27, 2026

Executive Summary

Murali Vivekanandan is the founder and President of Ideas2IT Technologies, a product engineering company that builds software for enterprises and startups from its base in Chennai, with a US office in Plano, Texas. He started it in 2008 with a team of six after working in Silicon Valley at companies including Cisco and Google, and led it as chief executive as it grew; the company now names Gayathri V as CEO and him as President. Ideas2IT has also functioned as a startup studio, developing product ideas through an entrepreneur-in-residence programme and spinning them off, and he co-founded one of those companies, PipeCandy.

Career Highlights

• Founded Ideas2IT Technologies in Chennai in 2008 with six people; it had 250 employees by late 2017 and now describes itself as a 900-plus member engineering organisation.
• President of Ideas2IT, having earlier led it as founder and CEO.
• Worked in Silicon Valley at companies including Cisco and Google before returning to India to start the company.
• Co-founded PipeCandy with Shrikanth Jagannathan and Ashwin Ramasamy; it raised $1.1 million in seed funding from IDG Ventures and angel investors.
• Designed Ideamed, a hospital management system adopted by hospitals including Dr Agarwal’s Eye Hospital and Kamineni Hospitals.

Professional Journey

Vivekanandan grew up in a village near Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu and earned a master’s degree from the University of Pune. He then moved to Silicon Valley and worked for large technology companies there, including Cisco and Google. “Before I founded Ideas2IT, I was working with Google in the Silicon Valley,” he told DQ Channels in 2021.

In 2008 he returned to India and founded Ideas2IT Technologies in Chennai with a team of six. The firm set out as a product engineering business, delivering software to large companies (YourStory named Microsoft, Ericsson, Siemens and Motorola among its clients in 2017) while also describing itself as “a startup for startups” that helps founders turn an idea into working technology. Its hiring approach, which he described as screening for potential rather than pedigree and recruiting heavily from smaller towns and less-known colleges, was the subject of a 2017 YourStory profile, by which time the company had 250 employees.

Alongside client work, Ideas2IT developed its own products and ventures. He designed Ideamed, a hospital management system taken up by several hospitals, and co-founded PipeCandy, a market intelligence company, with Shrikanth Jagannathan and Ashwin Ramasamy. The company formalised this as an entrepreneur-in-residence programme on a startup studio model, in which product ideas are validated, built and spun out as separate companies; PipeCandy, IdeaRx and Element5 are among the ventures associated with it.

Ideas2IT has since grown into what it describes as a 900-plus member engineering organisation working on AI, cloud, data and product modernisation for enterprise clients. Its leadership page now lists Gayathri V as Chief Executive Officer and Vivekanandan as President.

Education

University of Pune

Master’s degree