- From Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Arvind Krishna, Shantanu Narayen, Raghu Raghuram to Paras Agrawal now, Indian-origin tech CEOs have a global spirit with an Indian heart.
- Born in Indian middle-class homes, the CEOs of top tech companies in the world are engineers at heart.
- Their middle-class upbringing rooted in strong values of hard work perseverance and adaptability to change sets them apart.
With Parag Agrawal being named as the Twitter CEO, he becomes a part of the crème de la crème Indian-origin execs who are now helming the top global tech companies. And we have a list to be proud of — from Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, the list can go on.
Besides being of Indian origin, these stellar minds have a lot more in common. For starters, all their journeys begin from middle-class homes in India and it is that middle-class upbringing and values that seem to have given them an edge.
Indian engineers have a reason to smile as many of these top executives have studied at the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other prominent tech institutions in the country. Despite their humble origins and no dynasty to boast of, their hard work and sheer grit have got them where they are. Most importantly, these self-made stalwarts have stayed true to their roots. They’re still Indians hearts bearing a global spirit.
We handpicked some of them, starting with the latest entrant in the club. Here is a look at how men with ordinary beginnings have made an extraordinary impact on the world.
Parag Agrawal, CEO, Twitter
The 37-year-old was born in Mumbai to a father employed in the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and a mother who was a school teacher. He went to school at Atomic Energy Central School No.4 — the chain of schools run by the Atomic Energy Education Society for the children of DAE employees. A brilliant mind from the very start, Paras displayed an unusual knack with numbers and bagged the gold medal at the 2001 International Physics Olympiad held in Turkey.
Unsurprisingly for a mind so brilliant, Paras cracked his IIT-JEE. He pursued B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-Bombay and then moved to the US to earn his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University.
He worked in two short stints at Microsoft between 2006 and 2009, with a research role at Yahoo in between the stints. After a short role at AT&T Labs in 2010, he found his calling and joined Twitter in 2011. Rest, as they, is history.
P.S: He rarely tweets!
Sundar Pichai, CEO, Alphabet Inc. and Google
In a world where life without the ubiquitous Google is unthinkable, the man who heads the company today went to Jawahar Vidyalaya Senior Secondary School in Chennai. He switched schools to complete class XII from Vana Vani Matriculation Higher Secondary School.
Growing up in a two-bedroom home in Chennai’s Ashok Nagar with his brother Srinivasan, the siblings barely had access to technology. The modest income of his mother, Lakshmi, a stenographer, and his father, Regunatha Pichai, an electrical engineer at GEC, was just about enough to give the boys a decent upbringing with strong values of hard work and perseverance.
Sundar took those values seriously (and still does). He earned his metallurgical engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and graduated as a distinguished alumnus from the prestigious institution. The question was “what next?” Having qualified for the MS course in materials science and engineering from Stanford University, Sundar was faced with a dilemma — he couldn’t afford the plane fare to the US! He says that his father spent a year’s salary on his flight ticket so that he could study at Stanford, and this was the first time that Sundar sat on a plane. From there to the dizzying heights where he is now, we can only say his passion and the middle-class upbringing focussing on hard work have really stood him well.
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Born in 1967 into a Telugu-speaking in Hyderabad, Satyanarayana’s father Bukkapuram Nadella Yugandhar was an IAS officer and his mother Prabhavati was a Sanskrit lecturer.
After finishing his schooling at Hyderabad Public School in Begumpet, Satya pursued his electrical engineering. Again, a slight departure from the young CEOs, he didn’t attend IIT but went to Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka from where he graduated in 1988. MS was an obvious choice and he travelled to the US to study MS in computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and then an MBA from the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business in 1997.
Arvind Krishna, CEO, IBM
Born into a Telugu-speaking family in West Godavari District in the Coastal Andhra region in 1962, Arvind’s father, Major General Vinod Krishna ensured that his son got a value-based upbringing. Arvind’s mother, Aarathi Krishna was at home when she was not working for the welfare of Army widows.
Thanks to the armed-forces background and shifting bases, Arvind did his initial schooling from Stanes Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School in Coonoor and completed his schooling from St Joseph’s Academy, Dehradun. And then, he bought a ticket to Kanpur to pursue his BTech degree in electrical engineering from IIT, Kanpur in 1985. He graduated from IIT as a distinguished alumnus.
And then, another ticket, this time to the US, to earn a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1991. The ‘distinguished alumnus’ tag tagged with him, all way from IIT to Illinois. And the man stayed as a distinguished employee and now a distinguished leader who’s done us proud.
Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe Inc.
Located in Hyderabad’s Begumpet area, the Hyderabad Public School has more than one top CEO feather to its hat. Sure, Satya Nadella was one. But there was a boy who graduated from the school a few years before him. This was Shantanu Narayen who would go on to lead Adobe Inc.
Again, hailing from a Telugu-speaking family in Hyderabad, India, Shantanu was the second son of an American literature teacher and a father who ran a plastics company. After he stepped out of Hyderabad Public School, Shantanu’s found his way to the University College of Engineering in Osmania University, again in Hyderabad. He graduated in electronics and communication engineering before moving to the US to earn his master’s degree in computer science from Bowling Green State University in Ohio in 1986. After an MBA from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley in 1993, Shantanu’s career never looked back.
Raghu Raghuram, CEO, VMWare
The 58-year-old Rangarajan Raghu Raghuram is yet another jewel in the IIT-Bombay’s crown. After IIT-Bombay, Raghu went to The Wharton School, Cupertino, California for higher education, graduating in the class of 1996, before working in management and marketing roles at Netscape and Bang Networks. He joined VMware’s Server Business unit in the year 2003 when the company was a five-year-old startup. A brave choice at the dawn of the millennium, one would say. However, Raghu went on to become the CEO of VMware on May 12, 2021. His net worth today is estimated at $82.6 million.
