Sanjay Shah '89 MBA

Sanjay Shah is a tech entrepreneur, Founder, and CEO of enterprise software company Vistex. Shah continues to lead the organization that helps global titans such as Apple, Walmart, 3M, Viacom, Intel, and Bayer improve revenue and margins. By solving complex business problems, including pricing, trade, royalties, and incentives, companies gain a clear picture of how these critical processes impact their financial, marketing, and sales functions.

Shah’s bootstrap story began when he left Mumbai, India, to attend Lehigh University’s business school, where he earned his MBA in 1989 at the age of 21. He held positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers and General Motors before moving to Germany to work for software giant SAP.

He left SAP to found Vistex, and for two decades, the company achieved unprecedented year-over-year growth without outside funding, expanding operations globally and broadening its portfolio across 15 industries. In 2019, Shah accelerated growth opportunities with its first minority equity investment from Silicon Valley-based Accel-KKR (AKKR), infusing $65 million to fuel the company’s continued dominance. In recent years, Shah announced a minority equity investment from SAP to accelerate innovation, a testament to the companies’ two-plus decade relationship. 

A self-made man, Shah has a deep-felt desire to give back. As part of Vistex’s corporate social responsibility initiatives, Shah formed the Vistex Foundation, which provides grants to nonprofits focusing on health, education, and basic needs programming, as well as Vistex Endeavor, an employee-focused charity encouraging company-wide volunteerism. An impassioned lifelong learner, Shah donated $5 million to Lehigh University to establish the Vistex Institute for Executive Learning and Research there. In 2020, the Vistex Hospital was opened in Bihar, India, serving the community with primary and secondary care; and in the last year, the hospital was recognized as a national model Covid-19 facility and is adding two new floors to its facilities.

Watch Sanjay Shah as the 2022 Donald M. Gruhn '49 Distinguished Finance Series speaker.

Published August 2019

(NOTE: Sadly, Sanjay Shah passed away in January 2024 at the age of 55.)