India rising: Sundar Pichai, other top India-born CEOs and the powerhouses they lead

Born in 1972, Pichai grew up in Chennai and did all his schooling in the city. He then later went on to pursue metallurgical engineering at the prestigious Indian Institute of Engineering (Kharagpur) and then, MS at Stanford and MBA at Wharton. It was in 2004 that Pichai joined Google to lead their Chrome OS and Chrome browser divisions. He was also instrumental in the development of popular apps such as Google Maps. Later, in 2013, he also began to oversee Android, now one of the most popular mobile OS in the world alongside Apple and Windows.

On Tuesday, Pichai was named the new CEO of Google as part of a restructuring process in which a parent company, Alphabet, is being formed with Larry Page and Sergey Brin at its helm.

Satya Nadella

Nadella, born in Hyderabad to a Telugu family, was the son of an IAS officer. He then later went on to complete his degree in electrical engineering from the Manipal University and then took off for the US to pursue his MS and MBA degrees. In 1992, Nadella joined Microsoft, the powerhouse that was founded by Bill Gates.

Within 22 years, he rose through the ranks of the company to be finally named as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft in February last year.

“During this time of transformation, there is no better person to lead Microsoft than Satya Nadella,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft’s Founder and Member of the Board of Directors. In a press release, Microsoft said that “Nadella has spearheaded major strategy and technical shifts across the company’s portfolio of products and services, most notably the company’s move to the cloud and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world supporting Bing, Xbox, Office and other services. During his tenure overseeing Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business, the division outperformed the market and took share from competitors.”

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Indra Nooyi

Indra Nooyi, ranked number 15 in Forbes’ list of 100 most powerful women, is the current CEO and chairperson of PepsiCo, one of the largest food and beverage corporations in the world. She was born in Chennai in 1955 and completed her schooling in the city itself. Later, she went on to complete her MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. She got admitted to the prestigious Yale University and earned her master’s degree.

In 1994, she joined PepsiCo and was heading the global strategies division and was also a part of the restructuring process of the company. In Nooyi’s leadership, Forbes says that the company is “winning the soda wars in the market: Its stock raced past rival Coca-Cola’s last year, returning 17% to Coke’s meager 5%.”

Shantanu Narayen

Narayen was born in Hyderabad and did his engineering from the Osmania University. He later went to University of California, Berkeley for his MBA and Bowling Green State University for an MS in Computer Science.  Even though he started his career at Apple, it was at Adobe, today one of the world’s largest software companies, that his career began to take shape in 1998.

In the early 2000s, he held various positions in product research and development, including executive vice president of worldwide products. In 2007, he was named CFO and president in charge of several departments such as global operations, product research and development. The company says that “Narayen’s leadership, technology insight and operational expertise have strengthened Adobe’s culture of innovation, expanded the company into new markets, and extended its product portfolio and global reach.”

Rajeev Suri.

Rajeev Suri

Rajeev Suri is the president and CEO of Nokia Solutions and Networks and has deep expertise in many areas of technology, particularly mobile networks and related topics such as big data analytics, cloud computing. He was born in India and did his engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology. Suri is a Singaporean citizen and is based in Espoo, Finland.

He joined the company in 1995 and has worked in several executive level positions. According to the company, “he delivered a complete turnaround, taking non-IFRS operating profitability from significant losses to among the highest quality in the sector; cash flow from rapid burn to strongly positive; and, based on external analyst estimates, increasing the value of the business from in the range of €1 billion to €9-10 billion.”