Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has named IIT Bombay and Stanford University alumnus Parag Agrawal as his successor. At 37 years old, Parag Agrawal is the youngest tech executive to join the group of prominent Indian-origin CEOs in the US. He attended a central school under the Atomic Energy Education Society in Maharashtra, before graduating in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay. Here’s a list of prominent Indian-origin CEOs of global companies, many of whom completed their early education in India.
Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, attended Hyderabad Public School in Begumpet. He went on to study electrical engineering at Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka. Nadella then shifted to the US for an MS degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, earned a degree in metallurgical engineering from IIT Kharagpur and an MS degree in material science and engineering from Stanford. He followed this with an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Shantanu Narayen, Adobe Inc. CEO since 2018, also attended Hyderabad Public School. He completed his electronics and communication engineering degree at the University College of Engineering, Osmania. He moved to the US for a Master's degree in computer science from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. An MBA came next from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
Sanjay Mehrotra, boss of Micron and co-founder of SanDisk, started his academic journey at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya in New Delhi. He transferred mid-way from BITS Pilani to attend Berkley for a Bachelor's and Master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science at the age of just 21 years. In 2009, Mehrotra attended a Stanford Graduate School of Business executive education programme.
Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, split his schooling at Stones Anglo Indian School, Coonoor, and St Joseph's Academy, Dehradun. A BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur came next, followed by a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Nikesh Arora, Chairman of Palo Alto Networks Inc, attended Airforce School in New Delhi and then IIT (BHU) Varanasi for his electrical engineering. He then did an MBA from Northeastern University.
Ajay Banga, Executive Chairman of Mastercard, is part of the Hyderabad Public School club, followed by economics at St Stephen's College in Delhi. He then went to IIM Ahmedabad for a PGDBM (Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management).
Indra Nooyi, Chairperson of Pepsico until 2019, has a Bachelor's degree in physics, chemistry and maths from Madras Christian College and PGDBM from IIM Calcutta. In 1978, Nooyi attended Yale where she earned a Master's degree in public and private management.
Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup until October 2012, started from Bishop Cotton School in Nagpur but completed his schooling at the Dadar Parsee Youths Assembly High School in Mumbai. He moved to the US at the age of 16 years and attended Columbia for the entire academic track thereafter. This included an undergraduate programme, a BS and MS in electrical engineering, and a turn to economics and finance for an MBA and PhD in finance.
Ashok Vemuri, former CEO of Conduent Inc and IGATE, received a Bachelor's degree in physics from St Stephen's College, New Delhi, and then did his PGDBM from IIM Ahmedabad.
There are many other names on the list of Indian-origin executives, including --
Anjali Sud, CEO of Vimeo; Dhivya Suryadevara, Chief Financial Officer at Stripe; Raghu Raghuram, CEO at VMWare; Thomas Kurian, CEO at Google Cloud; George Kurian, CEO at NetApp; Laxman Narasimhan, CEO at Reckitt Benckiser; Jayshree V Ullal, CEO at Arista Networks, Vivek Sankaran, CEO at Albertsons Companies; Punit Renjen, Global CEO at Deloitte;
Vasant "Vas" Narasimhan, CEO at Novartis; Niraj S. Shah, CEO at Wayfair.
