Boardroom takeover? Indian leaders are calling the shots at global giants
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Shailesh Jejurikar, born and raised in Mumbai, was named the next CEO of Procter & Gamble.
Sabih Khan, from Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, became Apple's Chief Operating Officer.
Kevan Parekh, born in India, stepped in as Apple's Chief Financial Officer in January.
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Indian-origin CEOs running Fortune 500 giants
New faces, big roles
Sandeep Dutta, President of AWS India and South Asia (Nov 2024)
Srinivas Pallia, CEO & MD of Wipro (April 2024)
Arundhati Chakraborty, Group CEO of Operations at Accenture (Sept 2024)
Somit Goyal, CEO of IBS Software (June 2024)
Rajesh Varrier, Global Head of Operations and Chairman & MD for India, Cognizant (Sept–Oct 2024)
Abhijit Dubey, CEO of NTT DATA's global ops outside Japan (June 2024)
Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake (Feb 2024)
Vaibhav Taneja, CFO & Chief Accounting Officer, Tesla (since Aug 2023)
Uma Amuluru, CHRO and EVP at Boeing (April 2024)
Veterans still leading the charge
Satya Nadella (Microsoft), born in Hyderabad
Sundar Pichai (Google/Alphabet), from Madurai, IIT Kharagpur
Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), from Hyderabad
Arvind Krishna (IBM), Andhra Pradesh native, IIT Kanpur
Ajay Banga (World Bank), Pune-born, IIM Ahmedabad
Vasant Narasimhan (Novartis), raised in India
Leena Nair (Chanel), Kolhapur-born, XLRI alum
Nikesh Arora (Palo Alto Networks), from Ghaziabad
Sanjay Mehrotra (Micron), from Kanpur
George Kurian (NetApp)
Ravi Kumar S (Cognizant), from Trichy
Vimal Kapur (Honeywell), CEO since 2023, Chairman since 2024
Others like Raj Subramaniam (FedEx) and Jayshree Ullal (Arista Networks) round out the list
Why this happened
Engineering talent built for export
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5x more likely to take calculated risks
6x more likely to embrace challenges
Consistently ahead on resilience and process thinking
Learning to thrive in chaos
Cultural fluency matters
The boomerang effect
Even the jokes have changed. As former US ambassador Eric Garcetti said last year, 'The old joke was you could not become a CEO in the US if you were Indian. Now the joke is you cannot become a CEO in America if you are not Indian.'He wasn't kidding. According to Garcetti, who was speaking at the 2024 Indiaspora AI Summit at Stanford University, over one in ten Fortune 500 CEOs are now Indian immigrants who studied in the US.This isn't just a trend. It's a real shift in global leadership, and it often starts far from the boardrooms of New York or the tech corridors of Silicon Valley. It starts in Indian towns and cities, in engineering colleges and crowded homes, with parents betting everything on education.Just this year, three Indians took top roles at some of the world's most powerful companies:They're not anomalies. They're part of a growing wave.As of July 2025, at least 11 Fortune 500 companies are headed by Indian-origin CEOs, according to Newsweek. These firms together hold over $6.5 trillion in market cap. That's not symbolic success. That's structural power.And here's what matters: many of these CEOs weren't just born to Indian parents, they were born and educated in India before building global careers.A series of high-profile appointments over the last year signals just how broad this movement is:The old guard is still going strong:A lot of it starts with engineering. India's IITs, especially Kharagpur, Bombay, Delhi, Madras, and Kanpur, were always meant to be elite. They are.Admission rates are brutal. IIT Bombay's B.Tech acceptance rate has been as low as 0.6%, according to the Jawhar College of Education. That level of selectivity has created generations of problem-solvers who thrive under pressure.Take Raj Gupta, born in Muzaffarnagar, IIT Bombay grad, 1967. He moved to the US with $8 in his pocket. Eventually, he became Chairman and CEO of Rohm and Haas. A mentor told him: 'You have to get the idea of the white man at the top out of your head.' That shift in mindset shaped his climb.While the IITs are preeminent, India's broader engineering ecosystem also produces world-class talent:Satya Nadella didn't go to an IIT, he studied at Manipal. But by 2014, he was running Microsoft. Since then, its valuation has jumped from $300 billion to over $3 trillion.Sundar Pichai, raised in a modest Madurai home, earned his stripes at IIT Kharagpur and joined Google in 2004. He now runs Alphabet.This isn't just academic horsepower. It's grit, adaptability, and insane work ethic.A study by leadership advisory firm ghSMART, which analysed 30,000 execs, found Indian-origin leaders are:And those traits aren't picked up in business school, they're shaped growing up in India.India doesn't teach perfection. It teaches improvisation. Traffic jams, power cuts, bureaucracy, navigating daily life here is a crash course in problem-solving.As Ravi Kumar (Cognizant CEO) said in an interview: 'If you can drive a car in India, you can drive anywhere in the world.'That ability to work through ambiguity, what Indians call jugaad, makes Indian-origin CEOs effective in unpredictable markets. ghSMART found they're particularly strong at making fast decisions without perfect data.In global companies, being able to translate between worlds isn't just nice, it's essential. Indian-origin CEOs have an edge here.Leena Nair (Chanel): Spent decades at Unilever, mastering talent management across 190 countries. Chanel picked her not for fashion experience, but for her global leadership chops.Raj Subramaniam (FedEx): Born in Kerala, he's climbed FedEx's ranks since 1991. His real strength? Running complex global supply chains while managing cross-cultural teams.Indra Nooyi (ex-PepsiCo): From Chennai, she built PepsiCo's Performance with Purpose strategy, blending growth with social and environmental accountability.Neal Mohan (YouTube): Raised partly in India, he's scaled YouTube globally by tuning into user habits in India and other emerging markets.The narrative of Indian talent solely seeking opportunities abroad is rapidly evolving. A significant "boomerang effect" is now in full swing, where highly skilled professionals are either returning to India or choosing to stay and build globally competitive businesses right from their homeland. This trend highlights India's maturing ecosystem, proving it's a fertile ground for entrepreneurship and high-impact innovation.Consider these impactful examples of talent choosing to build in India:Sridhar Vembu (Zoho): After a stint in the U.S., Vembu made the unconventional decision to relocate to rural Tamil Nadu. From this unexpected base, he meticulously built Zoho, a global Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) powerhouse now valued at over $5.8 billion. Zoho's success showcases how world-class enterprises can emerge from non-traditional locations within India, creating significant domestic employment and technological advancement.Sachin and Binny Bansal (Flipkart): These IIT Delhi graduates famously departed from Amazon to co-found Flipkart in Bangalore. Their entrepreneurial vision led to the creation of India's largest e-commerce platform, fundamentally reshaping the country's retail landscape. This venture culminated in Walmart acquiring a majority stake in 2018 for a monumental $16 billion, highlighting the immense value being generated by Indian-founded startups.This domestic dynamism is further bolstered by a robust financial ecosystem:Venture Capital Boom: India's startup scene has become incredibly attractive to investors. A staggering $38.5 billion in venture capital poured into Indian startups in 2021, indicating strong investor confidence and a thriving innovation environment.Stronger Domestic Markets: While India isn't directly aiming to rival global exchanges like NASDAQ, its own stock exchanges, such as the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), have grown exponentially. The BSE is now among the world's largest by market capitalisation, signifying the increasing ability of Indian companies to raise substantial capital right at home, reducing reliance on international markets and showcasing the growing sophistication of India's financial infrastructure.This surge in Indian-origin leadership isn't about optics. It's about skill, developed in India, refined globally, and now recognised as essential to running the world's biggest companies.
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