Sajan Pillai, who built UST Global Inc. into a company with a $1 billion-plus valuation, said late last month he will retire.
Chief Financial Officer and President Krishna Sudheendra will become the next chief executive at the Aliso Viejo-based company.
Pillai will continue to serve on the board of the privately held company. He said he will focus on a new venture fund.
UST Global provides tech services to large corporations, including many Fortune 500 companies in industries like banking, insurance and telecom.
It has deep ties to India, where Pillai graduated with a degree in computer science and engineering from the College of Engineering-Trivandrum in India.
Prior to UST, he managed several large software systems for telecom MCI in the U.S.
Pillai was a co-founder of UST in 1999.
“We started at the cusp of the private equity/venture capital flow into dot-coms—money was plentiful but value was scarce,” Pillai told CEO Today magazine in a 2017 interview. “We decided we weren’t going to chase venture money and go to the dot-coms—we didn’t find a sustainable value proposition there.”
“Instead, we focused on the Fortune 100 companies. This was counterintuitive as people often told me that if you’re entering a market, you need to go after the midsized and small players versus the large ones. But if you have one of the best execution models, why not work with the best?”
He became UST’s chief executive in 2008 after previously serving as president and chief operating officer.
UST has more than 17,000 employees in nearly 35 offices around the globe, providing everything from online technical support to cybersecurity solutions. Its Aliso Viejo headquarters has an estimated 100 employees.
Over the years, company executives have discussed going public, but an IPO never moved ahead.
Last year, UST received a $250 million investment from Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd., Singapore’s state-run investment fund that has a portfolio around $200 billion. Temasek’s 20% minority stake puts the company in unicorn status with a valuation of over $1 billion and represents its first institutional investment.
The company doesn’t disclose revenue. The Business Journal last year estimated the company’s sales at around $800 million, which is most likely on the low side.
Sudheendra, who has been chief financial officer since 2008, took the president role in the past year as part of the company’s succession plan.
“This announcement is the successful culmination of a multiyear succession plan to select the best leader for UST Global,” UST Chairman Paras Chandaria, whose family constitutes the main shareholder group of UST, said in a statement.
