Why America’s Tech Giants are Hiring Indians as their CEOs

It’s no wonder that the top US companies love Indian-origin CEOs. From Microsoft, Google to Twitter, CEOs of some of the world’s most recognizable tech giants are Indian or share origins from India. Google’s CEO is Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s CEO is Satya Nadella, Adobe’s CEO is Shantanu Narayen, IBM’s CEO is Arvind Krishna, and now Twitter CEO has been appointed Mr. Parag Agrawal.

Recently, Mr. Parag Agrawal took over as CEO for Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey who is the longest-serving chief executive in the company. Reacting to Parag Agrawal’s appointment as Twitter’s new CEO, Tesla chief Elon Musk has said that “USA benefits greatly from Indian talent!”. Elon Musk was replying to Stripe CEO Patrick Collison’s tweet, which stated that six US tech giants are now run by Indian-origin CEOs.

Indian Executives in Tech Giants

Some impeccable qualities in Indian senior executives

1. High Qualifications and Rich Experience

Most of today’s Indian tech-CEOs are engineers first and foremost, making them an ‘engineer’s manager’ and not just any MBA. They have emerged from many of India’s leading engineering colleges like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) located across the country. Almost all Indian-origin executives have studied in IITs at some point in their life. Admission into the IITs is like Ivy League admissions on steroids and the students studying there have great work ethic.

Parag Agarwal holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay). He attended Kendriya Vidyalaya (Central School) and IIT Mumbai and followed it with a Stanford PhD. He joined Twitter in 2011 and rose through the ranks to become the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) by 2018. 

Likewise, Satya Nadella, who was named the chairman of Microsoft on June 16, was born in Hyderabad on August 19, 1967. He graduated from Manipal Institute of Technology, Karnataka in 1988 as an electrical engineer. He then earned his master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, the US in 1990, and started his career at Sun Microsystems.

2. Great Team Players and Humility

Indian executives are reported to be great team players in their company. Not only they are willing to learn from others but also teach what they know to others. This creates an environment of humbleness and humility at work. You can’t get more humble than Sundar Pichai. He grew up in the southern Indian city of Chennai in a house with just two rooms, where Pichai and his brother slept in the living room. Similarly, Microsoft’s Nadella is cut from the same cloth, quick to apologize for errors, and collaborative approach to management.

3. Passionate in their work

All of the top Indian tech giant CEOs have passionately worked in technological sectors for years. They have been heads of product companies or have risen through the ranks by heading product divisions. Apparently, they are self-aware of the fast-changing pace of technology. Every day they have to deal with the fact that today’s gadgets may be obsolete the next day. So, they have to passionately invent, innovate and renovate.

Sundar Pichai was introduced as Google CEO in 2015, and later took charge of parent company Alphabet in 2019. He is a B. Tech from IIT Kharagpur and had joined Google in 2004. He is one of the most passionate workers at Google. He has enthusiastically uplifted several businesses like Android, Chrome, Maps, etc, and acquired several companies.

4. Cutting running costs of the company

Of all the chief executives that have been appointed in top tech companies, many have brought swift changes and improvements in their respective companies. However, four of them were turnaround artists, resurrecting the fortunes of companies with plummeting fortunes. These Indian-origin executives are great at saving the company money especially the running cost which makes them special in a way. In this way, they have managed to increase the overall profit and hence bring great value to the company.