Jay (Jayaprakash) Vijayan is a US-based entrepreneur, engineer, inventor, and investor. He is the founder and CEO of Tekion Corp, a

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is cons ...

company based in the United States of America. Prior to founding Tekion, he served as chief information officer (CIO) at

Tesla Motors Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Tesla designs and manufactures electric vehicles (electric cars and electric truck, trucks), battery energy storage from ...

. He also worked for

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

and

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

Early life and education

Jay was born in

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

, into a Tamil family, to K. Vijayan and V. Umadevi. His father operated a computer science training and coaching institute in the city. Jay completed his education at AVM Matriculation and Avichi Higher Secondary Schools. Subsequently, he pursued his higher studies at the University of Madras in Chennai, where he earned both a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

and a

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

degree.

Career

Jay started his career at Bahwan CyberTek before moving to

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and finally to the US. He joined

City Developments Limited City Developments Limited (CDL), sometimes also known as CityDev, is a Singaporean multinational real estate operating organisation. Founded in 1963, CDL first developed projects in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, as well as in Singapore. Due to geo-po ...

, a real estate organization headquartered in

, and gained expertise in Oracle database certification programs. He worked at

in the US from 1999 to 2007, holding several engineering leadership positions. In 2007, Jay moved to

, Inc., a

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

-based

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

and

virtualization technology Hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers as complete hardware platforms, certain logical abstractions of their componentry, or only the functionality required to run various operating systems. Virtualization hides the physic ...

company, where he served as Senior Director from 2007 to 2012. A recruiter approached Jay from

while he was in the US. However, Tesla couldn't match the salary he was receiving at his current position at VMware, so Jay declined to join the company. After a year, Tesla extended another job offer to Jay, and he had a conversation with

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...

. Despite having to accept a lower salary, Jay agreed to a salary cut and made the decision to join Tesla. Jay Vijayan was the Chief Information Officer at

from 2012 to 2016, where he reported directly to Musk. Jay and his team were in charge of developing and managing Tesla's digital and information systems. In early 2016, Jay left Tesla to found Tekion Corp, a

company that operated in

stealth mode In business, stealth mode is a company's temporary state of secretiveness, usually undertaken to avoid alerting competitors to a pending product launch or another business initiative. When an entire company is in stealth mode it may attempt to ...

up until late 2019. Tekion is a cloud technology company focusing on business applications currently aimed at the automobile retail industry. In 2020, Tekion Corp raised $150 million as part of its series C funding round led by private equity firm

Advent International Advent International is a global private equity firm focused on buyouts of companies in Western and Central Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia. The firm focuses on international buyouts, growth and strategic restructuring in five core ...

. In the year 2021, Tekion secured $250 million in a Series D financing round from Alkeon Capital and Durable Capital, resulting in a valuation of over $3.5 billion for the company. Jay serves on the board of the HyreCar, a

P2P P2P may refer to: * Pay to play, where money is exchanged for services * Peer-to-peer, a distributed application architecture in computing or networking ** List of P2P protocols * Phenylacetone, an organic compound commonly known as P2P * Poin ...

car sharing marketplace and NIC Inc., a digital government service provider for

federal Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to: Politics General *Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies *Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...

and state governments of the United States. Jay Vijayan also sits on the advisory board at Sibros, an Over-the-Air (OTA) platform connected to vehicle systems.

Awards and recognition

In 2014, Jay Vijayan received the Tamil American Pioneer – Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Engineering/Science from the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North American. Jay has several patents that have been granted by the

United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...

(USPTO).

Personal life

Vijayan lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vijayan, Jay Year of birth missing (living people) University of Madras alumni Businesspeople from Chennai American people of Indian Tamil descent Living people Indian chief executives

Early life and education

Career

Awards and recognition

Personal life

Further reading

References