 Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni was born on 4 October 1956 in the small town of Kurundwad in Maharashtra, into a Kannada speaking Deshastha Madhva Brahmin family.His father, Dr. R. H. Kulkarni, was a surgeon based in Hubballi and his mother, Vimala Kulkarni, was a devoted home-maker.He is one of four children and has three sisters, namely Sunanda Kulkarni, Sudha Murthy (wife of Infosys founder Narayana Murthy) and Jaishree Deshpande (wife of Gururaj Deshpande).