Tech entrepreneur Sanjay Shah ’89 MBA—a proud Lehigh alumnus, philanthropist, and founder and CEO of the Chicago-based mostly world software package business Vistex, Inc.—was tragically killed Thursday (Jan. 18) in India, soon after an incident at Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad during a 25th anniversary celebration for Vistex Asia Pacific. He was 55.
Shah, whose generosity elevated executive education at Lehigh’s School of Enterprise, started Vistex, Inc., which grew into a throughout the world procedure with 20 global offices and 2,000-as well as staff, in 1999. Its buyers involve some of the world’s greatest brands these types of as Standard Motors, Barilla and Bayer.
Shah’s important gifts to the university recognized the Vistex Institute for Executive Schooling at Lehigh and permitted the college and the College of Organization to shift forward in strengthening engagements with marketplace and business. Shah was the showcased speaker in the Donald M. Gruhn ’49 Distinguished Finance Speaker Collection at Lehigh in Oct 2022.
“I am stunned and saddened to listen to of Sanjay’s loss of life,” stated Georgette Chapman Phillips, the Kevin L. and Lisa A. Clayton Dean of the University of Business enterprise. “My heart goes out to his wife and daughters and all the folks at Vistex. Sanjay was a visionary entrepreneur and generous philanthropist.
“Sanjay was a true buddy of Lehigh Business but also dedicated to building a change in his indigenous state of India by his funding of hospitals for the poor,” Phillips said. “By the Vistex Institute for Executive Schooling, we hope to preserve Sanjay’s beacon of innovation and lifelong mastering burning brightly.”
Lehigh President Joseph J. Helble ’82, who had offered Shah with an Remarkable Entrepreneur Award in 2021 for his significant accomplishment as an alumnus in managing an business, explained Shah as “a visionary, aggressive, warm, and down-to-earth chief who was immensely proud of his family, the small business he crafted, and his Lehigh schooling.” He stated Shah’s legacy extends outside of his skilled achievements: “It encompasses the transformative contributions he designed to our college.”
The new, state-of-the-artwork property for the Vistex Institute at Lehigh opened a 12 months in the past upon completion of the Business enterprise Innovation Making. Shah experienced attended the opening celebration on March 3, 2023 and addressed his enduring assistance for government schooling at the college.
“I variety of started off my journey in the United States at Lehigh,” he mentioned in a movie job interview marking the opening. “This was my initial stop on my route to achievement, and so it suggests a great deal to me to pay it ahead.”
Shah mentioned that he derived the title of his organization, Vistex, from a fusion of the text “vision” and “execution.” In a conversation with Phillips for the Gruhn lecture collection, he mentioned, “The genesis of Vistex, and really, the term Vistex—I owe that to a professor right here at Lehigh, consider it or not. It was our professor of global finance, and in just one of his lectures he had explained, ‘Vision with out execution is just daydreaming and execution devoid of a vision is just really hard work.’ You will need equally, and so I figured why really don’t I include that into the title of my corporation? And that’s how Vistex came about. It truly is eyesight to execution.”
Shah also talked about the founding and growth of Vistex without outdoors funding, the drive and pull of adopting new systems, and explored whether the superior that new technological innovation delivers outweighs the prospective hurt it could induce.
Shah, who grew up in a limited-knit relatives in India, experienced occur to the United States in the late 1980s especially to go to Lehigh. He had analyzed commerce and languages as section of his undergraduate research in India, but for his graduate reports, he sought out Lehigh, as it was also the alma mater of a business enterprise icon he had deeply admired, Lee Iacocca ’45.
Immediately after earning his MBA, he worked in audit at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which had recruited him at Lehigh for its offices in Easton, Pennsylvania. In 6 months nevertheless, he stated, he knew it wasn’t the correct task for him. He switched directions, taking a work with Basic Motors in Canada in operations and logistics, wherever he came to notice his enthusiasm for engineering in enterprise.
“If you ask—what is the 1 detail you like performing the most?—it’s challenge-resolving,” he stated in an job interview with Lehigh Enterprise seven several years ago. “And technological innovation aids me remedy enterprise issues. Technological innovation is a means to an conclusion. If you are confronted with [business] problems, there is technology out there to tackle them.”
Soon after Standard Motors, Shah joined SAP as it expanded into Chicago, then relocated to Germany with the organization for about two yrs. Back again in Chicago with SAP, he approached enterprise officers with his area of interest thoughts. They did not want to devote in these parts at the time, but informed him that if he ever became productive, they would think about doing work with him.
So Shah went off and crafted software program and a program business to execute his eyesight.
The philanthropic arm of Shah’s business, Vistex Basis, gives methods to individuals in want. The basis works generally in the locations of overall health, schooling and micro lending, primarily in some of the more demanding spots of the world.
“We want to give support wherever help is necessary most,” Shah mentioned during the Gruhn lecture collection at Lehigh. “We’ve picked a several assignments. We truly started off with a distant location in Western Africa to make a maternity clinic, we’ve completed eye clinics, we’ve carried out micro lending in Central America. Our flagship venture … was to in fact make a complete-service clinic in just one of the most challenging areas in India. We delight in offering back, and this is a system to do so.”
At the time, he also spoke about the personnel-led initiative, Vistex Endeavor, which incorporates staff volunteerism and initiatives in the communities wherever workforce reside and operate.
Extra info about remembrances will be revealed after available.
–Rob Gerth contributed to this report