Twitter’s Parag joins fellow Indian American corporate bosses
The top seven companies headed by Indian American CEOs have earned a combined revenue of over $530 billion in 2020, topping the GDP of all but 40 nations...
WITH his elevation as the CEO of microblogging site Twitter, Parag Agrawal has joined a select group of Indian American CEOs heading US technology companies. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, and the top bosses of IBM, Adobe, Palo Alto Networks, VMWare and Vimeo are all of Indian descent.
Indian-origin people account for just about 1 percent of the US population and 6 percent of Silicon Valley’s workforce.
‘No other nation in the world ‘trains’ so many citizens in such a gladiatorial manner as India does,’ said R Gopalakrishnan, former executive director of Tata Sons.
Indian-born Silicon Valley CEOs are also part of a four million-strong minority group that is among the wealthiest and most educated in the US.
About a million of them are scientists and engineers. More than 70 percent of H-1B visas - work permits for foreigners - issued by the US go to Indian software engineers, and 40 percent of all foreign-born engineers in cities like Seattle are from India.
Meet the top Indian CEOs in the US Inc.
Sundar Pichai, CEO, Alphabet Inc. and Google
Sundar Pichai took over as the chief executive officer for Google and its new holding company
Alphabet in October 2015, replacing then-CEO and founder Larry Page.
The 49-year-old was born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, but grew up and completed schooling in
Ashok Nagar, Chennai. He attended IIT Kharagpur in India, and got his MS from Stanford and MBA from Wharton.
Pichai joined the tech giant in 2004, where he led product management for several products, including Google Chrome and Google Drive.
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Satya Nadella replaced Steve Ballmer as the CEO of Microsoft in 2014. He served as Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise Group, prior to becoming CEO.
Born in Hyderabad, India, Nadella worked at Sun Microsystems before joining Microsoft in 1992. The 22-year Microsoft veteran received his bachelor’s degree from the Manipal Institute of Technology in India, his MS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Under the leadership of Nadella, Microsoft acquired Mojang, LinkedIn, and Github. Parag Agrawal, CEO, Twitter
Parag Agrawal was elevated as CEO of Twitter in November 2021 after after founder CEO Jack Dorsey decided to step down. He also serves as a member of the Board.