Making India Proud! From Parag Agrawal to Sundar Pichai, 10 Indian-Origin CEOs Who Are Heading World’s Biggest Companies

New Delhi: With the elevation of Parag Agrawal as the CEO of Twitter, over half a dozen global tech companies are now being headed by Indian-Americans.  From Google’s Sundar Pichai to Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen to IBM’s Arvind Krishna, Indians are spearheading global roles in some of the biggest conglomerates across the world.

Here’s a look at 10 people of Indian origin holding key positions at global IT powerhouses. 

Sundar Pichai: In August 2015, Sundar Pichai was named CEO of the newly organised Google, becoming only the third chief executive of the company after former CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page. In December 2019, Pichai became the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet. Pichai wished Dorsey the very best ahead and congratulated Agrawal and Board Chair Bret Taylor, saying he is excited for Twitter’s future!

Satya Nadella: In February 2014, Microsoft veteran Satya Nadella was named CEO of the technology giant. MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, PepsiCo’s former CEO Indra Nooyi and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen are among the other Indian-origin executives who have climbed up the corporate ladder and helmed multinational giants.

Arvind Krishna: In January 2020, Indian-born technology executive Arvind Krishna was named Chief Executive Officer of American IT giant IBM after a “world-class succession process”, succeeding Virginia Rometty, who had described him as the right CEO for the next era at IBM and well-positioned” to lead the company into the cloud and cognitive era. Krishna, 59, had joined IBM in 1990 and has an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and a PhD. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Shantanu Narayen: Shantanu Narayen, an Indian American business executive has been the chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Adobe Inc. since December 2007. Before this, he was the company’s president and chief operating officer since 2005. Narayen grew up in Hyderabad, India, in a Telugu-speaking family. He was the second son of a mother who taught American literature and a father who ran a plastics company.

Raghu Raghuraman: Cloud computing company VMware had named  Indian-origin  Raghu Raghuram as its new CEO. Raghuram, who had joined the company in 2003, took over the new role on June 1. He has played a major role in helping grow VMware’s core virtualisation business, driven VMware’s software defined data centre strategy, constructed and guided VMware’s cloud computing business and SaaS transformation efforts as well as played a pivotal role in the company’s M&A strategy.

Jayshree Ullal: Jayshree V. Ullal is an American billionaire businesswoman, president and CEO of Arista Networks, a cloud networking company responsible for the deployment of 10/25/40/50/100 Gigabit Ethernet networking in the data center. Ullal was born in London, and raised in New Delhi, India, through her school years. Ullal began her career with engineering and strategy positions at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Fairchild Semiconductor. She was director of internetworking products at Ungermann-Bass for four years before joining Crescendo Communications. At Crescendo, Ullal became vice president of marketing, working with 100-Mbit/s over copper, the first CDDI products and first generation Ethernet switching.

Laxman Narasimhan: He is the chief executive (CEO) of Reckitt Benckiser, having previously been chief commercial officer at PepsiCo. Narasimhan worked for McKinsey for 19 years until 2012, rising to director and location manager for their New Delhi office. In 2012, he joined PepsiCo, rising to chief commercial officer. He succeeded Rakesh Kapoor as CEO of Reckitt Benckiser in September 2019.

Rajeev Suri: Born on October 10, 1967, Suri is a Singaporean business executive, and has been the CEO of Inmarsat since February 2021. He was previously the CEO of Nokia until 31 July 2020. Before being appointed Nokia’s CEO in May 2014, he was the CEO of Nokia Solutions and Networks from 2009 and held various positions within Nokia since 1995.

Dinesh C. Paliwal: Paliwal was the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Harman International, a provider of audio and infotainment systems for the automotive, consumer, and professional markets, from 2007 to 2020. After nearly 13 years with the company as President and CEO, he stepped down and now serving as a Senior Advisor to the board of directors.

Parag Agrawal: Last but not the least, Parag Agarwal, the newly-appointed CEO of Twitter, joined the high-profile league of Indian and Indian origin honchos. Agrawal has been with Twitter for more than a decade and has served as Chief Technology Officer since 2017. Dorsey returned to lead the company as CEO in 2015 despite being forced out of the post in 2008. Agrawal had joined the company in 2011 as an ads engineer, eventually taking the title of CTO in 2018.

source https://www.india.com/news/india/making-india-proud-from-parag-agrawal-to-sundar-pichai-10-indian-origin-ceos-who-are-heading-worlds-biggest-companies-5116845/