Laxman Narasimhan is the latest Indian-origin CEO of American coffee brand Starbucks, joining a growing list of techies and businesspersons of Indian origin heading multinational global firms.
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Starbucks head
55-year-old Narasimhan will begin his term as Starbucks CEO on October 1, after having stepped down as the CEO of Reckitt Benckiser – another global giant.
He earlier held a senior position at PepsiCo.
He is an alumnus of the University of Pune’s College of Engineering and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school.
Leena Nair, CEO, Chanel
Nair became the first woman and the youngest CEO of eminent fashion brand Chanel in January.
She began her career at Unilever in 1992 as a management trainee.
In 2016, she became the first Asian and the youngest ever Chief Human Resources Officer of the company.
Beyond the private sector, she has held various positions within the British government, including serving as a non-executive director for the business, energy, and industrial strategy department.
She holds a degree in engineering and management from Walchand College of Engineering and a degree in management from the Xavier School of Management.
Parag Agarwal, CEO, Twitter
Agrawal became Twitter’s new CEO in November 2021 after founder Jack Dorsey stepped down.
He earlier served as the company’s Chief Technology Officer.
He is the youngest CEO of a tech company on Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 company list.
He was born in Maharashtra and studied at the atomic energy central school in Mumbai.
After completing his B Tech degree in 2005 from IIT, Mumbai, he studied at Stanford University.
Sandeep Kataria, CEO, Bata
Bata India’s former CEO Sandeep Kataria became the first Indian to be appointed to the global role of a footwear company.
Before becoming the CEO of Bata India in 2017, he had worked in prominent MNCs such as Unilever, Vodafone, and Yum Brands.
He is an alumnus of IIT-Delhi and XLRI-Jamshedpur.
He was a gold medallist of the 1993 PGDBM batch at XLRI.
Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google
Pichai became the CEO of Google in 2015.
Before that he had been a part of various organizations such as McKinsey & Company as a management consultant, and Applied Materials in engineering.
He had joined Google in 2004 as one of its engineers.
He then gained recognition due to the success of Chrome.
After graduating from IIT Kharagpur, Pichai moved to the US for MS in engineering and materials science at Stanford University.
He then went on to get an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
He was a Palmer Scholar and a Siebel Scholar.
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Nadella began his career as a young engineer at Microsoft in 1992 before becoming the company’s CEO in 2014.
He headed the development of the company’s various products, such as the Windows and Xbox Live platforms.
After becoming the CEO, he introduced hackathons and reportedly worked on getting rid of short-sightedness and bureaucracy.
He couldn’t crack the entrance examinations for the Indian Institute of Technology on his first attempt.
However, he went on to get a B.Sc degree in electronics and communication engineering in 1988.
He studied at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe
Narayen became the CEO of Adobe in December 2007.
He had been the president and chief operating officer of the company.
Before this, Shantanu worked with a Silicon Valley start-up called Measurex Automation Systems and Apple.
He was born in Hyderabad and studied at Osmania University.
He later enrolled for postgraduate studies at Bowling Green State University and the University of California.
Arvind Krishnan, CEO, IBM
Krishnan has been the CEO of IBM since April 2020.
He became the company’s chairman in January 2021.
Before this he worked at the company’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
In 2015, he was promoted to the Senior Vice President position, and was responsible for the company’s various divisions, including the cloud and cognitive software.
Krishnan got his BTech degree from IIT Kharagpur.
He then went to the U.I. Urbana-Champaign and got a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1991.
Raghu Raghuram, CEO, VMware
Raghuram was appointed to the position of CEO effective at VMware on June 1, 2021.
He earlier held the position of chief operating officer for Products and Cloud Services at the company.
Raghuram was instrumental in the company’s growth, and led the development of its software-defined data center and cloud computing initiatives.
Raghuram went on to do his MBA from Wharton in 1994 after completing graduation from IIT-Bombay.
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