Indians have been playing a focal role in the success of technology powerhouses globally. India has produced a number of people who hold positions of power across the world and some of them have proved to be the most brilliant minds across the globe. India has climbed 2 spots and has been ranked 46th by the World Intellectual Property Organization in the Global Innovation Index 2021 rankings. India has been on a rising trajectory, over the past several years in the Global Innovation Index (GII), from a rank of 81 in 2015 to 46 in 2021. Here are the 25 Indian origin CEOs who are leading the most powerful companies in the world.
AJAYPAL SINGH BANGA Executive Chairman – Mastercard
Padma Shri awardee, Ajaypal Singh Banga is an Indian-American business executive born in Pune to a Punjabi family from Jalandhar. Recently, he has retired from the post of Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of Mastercard. He is one of the topmost Indian-American corporate leaders, and a strong advocate of India-US relationship. He is a graduate of Delhi University and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
Anjali Sud holds the position of CEO at Vimeo and has been serving this position since 2017. Vimeo is an open video platform. Prior to this she has worked with Amazon and Time Warner. Born to Indian immigrant parents, Sud was also featured in the coveted list of Hollywood Reporter’s Next Gen: 35 Under 35 honorees. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Arvind Krishna is associated with IBM for almost 30 years and is the CEO of IBM since April 2020, and became the Chairman on January 1, 2021. He was born in Andhra Pradesh. Arvind is an electrical engineer from IIT Kanpur and completed his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
ASHOK VEMURI Chairman of the Board - OSG Connect
New Delhi-born Ashok Vemuri is one among the Board of Directors for Financial Policy and Public Responsibilities at Kroger and was the former Chief Executive Officer of IGATE and Conduent. He also holds the position of Board of Director for Financial Policy and Public Responsibilities at Kroger. Prior to this he was associated with IGATE and Conduent as CEO. He has done PGDM from IIM, Ahmedabad.
DINESH C. PALIWAL CEO - Harman International Industries
Dinesh Paliwal was born in Agra and holds a BE and an MS degree from IIT Roorkee. He also obtained an MBA from Miami University. Paliwal is known as the former President and CEO of Harman International, an independent subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. Dinesh has served as an influential board member for a host of Fortune 500 companies.
FARANCISCO D’SOUZA Managing Partner - Recognize
Frank is a Co-Founder & Managing Partner of RECOGNIZE, a US-based private equity firm that will focus on a new generation of deep intellectual property-led tech services ventures. Prior to RECOGNIZE, Frank cofounded Cognizant Technology Solutions, a global multinational technology services company in 1994, and served as Cognizant’s CEO from January 2007 through March 2019 and Vice Chairman of the board from 2018 until 2020. Frank received an M.B.A. from Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Macau.
GEORGE KURIAN CEO and president - NetApp
George Kurian in the year 2015 took up the position of CEO and President of NetApp. Before NetApp, he also served companies like Cisco Systems, Akamai Technologies and McKinsey & Company. Born in Kerala, he pursued engineering at IIT-Madras, but left the college within six months to join Princeton University — this was followed by an MBA degree from Stanford.
INDRA NOOYI Board of Directors - Amazon
Indra Nooyi is an Indian-American business executive. She currently serves as the Board of Directors of Amazon and International cricket Council. Indra completed her elementary education from Holy Angels Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree from Madras Christian College of the University of Madras in 1974. In 2017, she was ranked the 2nd Most Powerful Women in the Forbes list. As of January 2021, she has an estimated net worth of $100 million
Ivan Menezes was appointed Chief Executive of Diageo plc in July 2013, having been an Executive Director since July 2012. Ivan is from Pune, he succeeded Paul S. Walsh to become the CEO of Diageo — one of the most prominent British multinational alcoholic companies in the world. He was educated at St. Stephen's College, Delhi and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and the North western University's Kellogg School of Management.
Jay Chaudhry is an accomplished entrepreneur, having founded a series of successful companies, including AirDefense, CipherTrust, CoreHarbor, Secure IT and Zscaler. Chaudhry leverages more than 25 years of security industry expertise, including engineering, sales, marketing and management experience with leading enterprises, such as IBM, NCR and Unisys. Prior to founding Zscaler in 2008, Chaudhry founded and led AirDefense, a wireless security pioneer, before its acquisition by Motorola.
JAYASHREE ULLAL President and CEO - Arista Network
Jayashree Ullal, is the President, and CEO of Arista Networks was raised in New Delhi and attended San Francisco State University from where she graduated with a B.S. in Engineering. Apart from Arista, she has also served companies like Cisco and AMD. She studied BS in electrical engineering from San Francisco State University and completed her master’s in engineering management from Santa Clara University.
NIKESH ARORA CEO - Palo Alto Networks
In 2018, Nikesh Arora became the CEO of Palo Alto Networks. Before this, he served Google and SoftBank. Prior to this, he has worked with Google and SoftBank. Born to an Indian Air Force Officer, Arora holds a BTech degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT BHU, Varanasi and he did his MBA from Northeastern University, and Master’s in science from Boston College
Nitin Rakesh, an Indian-American businessman and is currently the Chief Executive Officer and Director of Mphasis. Prior to that, Rakesh was Syntel's CEO and President, as well as CEO and Managing Director of Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company Ltd. Rakesh grew up in a small town on the outskirts of New Delhi and graduated in 1989. He earned his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Science from Delhi Institute of Technology DIT
PADMASREE WARRIOR Founder & CEO – Fable
Padmasree Warrior is an Indian-American businesswoman and technology executive. She is known for her leadership roles in technology firms like Cisco where she served as the CTO for seven years, and at Motorola where she was the CTO for five years. Currently, she is the founder and CEO of Fable, a curated reading platform focused on mental wellness. She also serves on the board of directors of Microsoft and Spotify. Warrior holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the IIT, New Delhi and a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University
Parag Agrawal had studied at the IIT Bombay. Then he decided to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University, US. Parag served several leadership positions at Microsoft Research and Yahoo! Research before he joined Twitter. From 2011, Parag Agrawal was positioned as Chief Technology Officer of Twitter.
PRADEEP SINDHU CEO & Founder – Fungible
Pradeep Sindhu is an Indian American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of data center technology company Fungible. Previously, he co-founded Juniper Networks, where he was the chief scientist and served as CEO until 1996. Sindhu holds a B.Tech. in electrical engineering (1974) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, M.S. in electrical engineering (1976) from the University of Hawaii. Fungible enables a high-performance, massively-scalable hyper-disaggregated infrastructure – one that can truly rise to the call of the data-centric era.
Rajeev 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. Rajeev holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering (Electronics and Communications) from Manipal Institute of Technology, India. Rajeev has been the driving force behind Nokia’s recent transformation, including its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, its successful expansion into enterprise vertical markets, the creation of a standalone software business, and the return of the Nokia brand to mobile phones.
RANGARAJAN RAGHURAM CEO – Vmware
Rangarajan Raghuram currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer - Products and Cloud Services of VMWare, who assumed his office on June 1, 2021. An IIT-Mumbai grad, he passed at the top at Wharton. He joined VMware in 2003 and steered the company’s strategic direction and its technology evolution. Raghuram is responsible for influencing the company's strategies, bringing forth a technological revolution that VMware has seen.
Revathi Advaithi is an Indian-born American business executive. She is the CEO of Flex (formerly Flextronics) and is an advocate for women in STEM and in the workplace. Earlier, she was associated with Eaton's electrical sector business as the President and COO. She holds a degree from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, and MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Prior to joining Flex in 2019, Advaithi worked in various leadership positions at Eaton and Honeywell.
ROMESH WADHWANI Co-Founder - Symphony Teleca
Romesh T. Wadhwani is an Indian-American billionaire businessman, the founder, chairman and CEO of Symphony Technology Group (STG), a private equity firm for software, Internet and technology services companies. Romesh was born in Karachi, British India (now Pakistan), is of Sindhi origin. Together with his brother, Sunil Wadhwani, he has founded Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Mumbai to develop artificial intelligence solutions for public good.
SANJAY MEHROTRA CEO - Micron Technology
Sanjay Mehrotra joined Micron in May 2017, appointed as the CEO of Micron Technology, he was the co-founder of SanDisk. Sanjay was overseeing its growth to an industry-leading Fortune 500 company. Sanjay holds more than 70 patents and has published articles in the areas of nonvolatile memory design and flash memory systems. He was born in Kanpur.
Hyderabad-born Satya Nadella has a BE from Manipal Institute of Technology, MS from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Nadella is from a Telugu-speaking family. His father was also a 1962 batch IAS officer, while his mother was a Sanskrit teacher. He became the CEO of Microsoft succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014
Shantanu Narayen, is the chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Adobe Inc. since December 2007. He took over as COO in the year 2005 and became CEO in 2007. Prior to Adobe, he was associated with Apple and Silicon Graphics. He is a Bachelor of Science from Osmania University, an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. With Adobe, he spearheaded the company’s move from desktop to cloud.
In 2019, Indian origin techie Sundar Pichai became the CEO of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google. He has served the company for more than 15 years and he spearheaded key businesses like Android, Chrome, Maps, and more. He did his BTech from IIT Kharagpur, MS from Stanford (MS) and MBA from Wharton. He was born in Tamil Nadu and married to an IITian from Rajasthan.
THOMAS KURIAN CEO - Google Cloud
In 2019, Thomas Kurian assumed the position of Chief Executive Office of Google Cloud. Prior to this, he was associated with Oracle and served the company for 22 years. He led product development as a Member of Oracle’s Executive Committee for 13 Years. Thomas Kurian was born in Kerala, India. Thomas Kurian was one among four brothers including his identical twin George Kurian, who was in 2015 made the CEO of NetApp.
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