Global Indians – 13 Global CEOs

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has all along been appreciative of the struggles and achievements of NRIs. His close association with a number of NRIs all across the world is well known. There is no country in the world where Modi does not have NRI friends.

And it is not only Modi who is appreciative of the NRI movers and shakers, the common Indian whether in India or abroad, takes great pride in the achievements of persons of Indian origin. So, here we are sharing with our readers information on the NRIs who are “global CEOs”. We congratulate them and take pride in their achievements which have done the Indian nation and its 1.3 billion people proud. They have made India’s Independence Day a very special one, with the laurels they have won.

Sundar Pichai – Pichai is an Indian American computer engineer and Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur alumnus. He is the new CEO of Google. The decision came after Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin decided to re-organize the company by creating a mother company called Alphabet.

The new mother company will include, besides Google, units such as Calico (which focuses on Longevity), X lab (which incubates new efforts like Wing, Google’s drone delivery effort) and units dealing with life sciences (such as the one working on smart contact lens that detects blood sugar level). Google’s investment arms, Ventures and Capital, will also be part of Alphabet.

The journey of Sundar Pichai from a student of IIT-Kharagpur to Google CEO has been truly remarkable.

Satya Nadella – Satya Narayana Nadella was born in Hyderabad on 19 August 1967. He is the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft. He was appointed as CEO on 4 February 2014, succeeding Steve Ballmer. Before becoming CEO of Microsoft, Nadella was Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group, responsible for building and running the company’s Computing Platforms, Developer Tools and Cloud Computing Services.

Nikesh Arora – Nikesh Arora is a former Google executive and President & Chief Operating Officer of SoftBank Corp.

Arora graduated from the IIT, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.

He holds a degree from Boston College and an MBA from Northeastern University. He also holds the CFA designation.

Ajaypal Singh Banga – Ajay Banga is the current president and chief executive officer of MasterCard.MasterCard announced on April 12, 2010 that Ajay Banga, previously MasterCard’s president and chief operating officer, had been named by the Board of Directors to serve as the company’s president and chief executive officer, effective July 1, 2010.

Banga succeeded Robert W. Selander, who had been MasterCard’s chief executive officer since March 1997.

Presently, he is also the chairman of the US-India Business Council (USIBC) representing more than three hundred of the largest international companies investing in India.

Indra Nooyi – India-born Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi is the current Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo, the second largest food and beverage business in the world by net revenue.

She has consistently ranked among the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.

In 2014, she was ranked 13 in the list of Forbes World’s 100 most powerful women.

Rakesh Sachdev – Rakesh Sachdev has been the Chief Executive Officer and President of Sigma-Aldrich Corporation since November 2010.

He served as the Chief Financial Officer of Sigma- Aldrich Corporation from November 18, 2008 to November 2010 and also served as its Chief Administrative Officer from May 2009 to November 14, 2010 and Senior Vice President from May 2005 to November 2010.

He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration in Finance from Indiana University, as well as a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois.

Francisco D’Souza  – Francisco D’Souza was born on 23 August 1968. He is the CEO of Cognizant and was part of the team that founded the NASDAQ-100 company in 1994.

Francisco is Cognizant’s CEO since January 2007.

Francisco D’Souza is among the youngest Chief Executive Officers in the software services sector. In 2007, at the age of 38, he took over from Lakshmi Narayanan, who was promoted to Vice Chairman.

Rakesh Kapoor – Rakesh Kapoor was born 4 August 1958. He is Chief Executive of Reckitt Benckiser plc, a UK FTSE-listed multinational consumer goods company, a major producer of health, hygiene and home products.

Anshu Jain – Anshuman Jain was born on 7 January 1963 in Jaipur. He took over as Co-CEO of Deutsche Bank on 1 June 2012 to succeed Management Board Chairman Josef Ackermann.

He was a co-CEO of the bank between 2012 and July 2015. He is a member of Deutsche Bank’s Management Board.

Earlier, as head of the Corporate and Investment Bank, he was globally responsible for Deutsche Bank’s corporate finance, sales and trading, and transaction banking business. Jain resigned as co-CEO in July 2015 though he is expected to remain a consultant to the bank until January 2016.

Vikram Pandit – Vikram Shankar Pandit was born on 14 January 1957. He is the former chief executive of Citigroup, a position he held from December 2007 until he was forced to resign, on 16 October 2012.

Shantanu Narayen – Shantanu Narayen was born on May 27 1963. He is the CEO of Adobe Systems. Prior to this, he was the president and chief operating officer since 2005. He is also the president of the board of the Adobe Foundation.

Padmasree Warrior – Padmasree Warrior is the former Chief Technology & Strategy Officer (CTO) of Cisco Systems, and the former CTO of Motorola, Inc.

As of 2014, she is listed as the 71st most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.

Rajeev Suri – Rajeev Suri headed Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) since October 2009, has been credited for “presiding over consistently improving results leading to the successful turnaround and restructuring of the company.” Suri joined Nokia in 1995 and headed the Asia Pacific region for NSN in 2007.

According to his official profile, Suri has a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Telecommunications from Mangalore University. He is based in Espoo, Finland.