Find out about the new Twitter CEO, Parag Agarwal, and why Indian CEOs are dominating the American business sector now.
Twitter CEO: Parag Agarwal
Parag Agarwal was born in Ajmer, India on 21st May 1984 and raised in Mumbai, India. His mother is a school teacher and his father, an atomic engineer. Parag Agarwal cracked JEE, one among the 15 of the toughest exams in the world. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) has an acceptance rate lower than Harvard and Parag has excelled in both.
Later on, Parag Agarwal pursued a doctorate at Stanford University in the field of computer science. He initially worked as a researcher at Yahoo, Microsoft, and AT&T Labs before being appointed as a software engineer in Twitter in 2011.
Is the Current CEO of Twitter?
- A. Jack Dorsey
- B. Parag Agarwal
- C. Indra Nooyi
- D. Jeff Bezos
Agarwal, the newly appointed CEO of Twitter was promoted to chief technology officer in 2017. Following his promotion, Twitter shares rose after he stressed the importance of using AI to increase user relevance while tweeting.
Jack Dorsey, the founder himself, voted Parag Agarwal for the role after being the CEO since 2006. Agarwal had been behind most major and critical decisions of the company making him a valuable resource. At present, his current challenges are to make a stand for Twitter among liberals who think the social media giant folds under the authority and right-wing activists while the center wing thinks liberals get a free run across the platform.
Indian CEOs in the USA
Parag Agarwal is not the first Indian to become the CEO of famous Big Techs and definitely not the last. Do you know how many Indians are currently the CEO of famous US Big Techs in the world?
Microsoft CEO
Satyanarayan Nadella was appointed the Microsoft CEO in 2014 following Steve Ballmer. Nadella played an important role in converting the entire company into a cloud computing business. Before becoming the CEO he was part of Microsoft since 1992.
Alphabet/Google CEO
Sundar Pichai, yet another IIT graduate became the CEO of Google in 2015 and subsequently the CEO of Alphabet in 2019 following the name change. Pichai was behind the development of Chrome and Android One. He had several career roles in Google before being appointed as the CEO such as VP of Product Development and Product Chief of Google and the Android smartphone OS. He worked in Mckinsey before joining Google.
Other Indian CEOs
Indra Nooyi was the CEO of Pepsico until 2018 before stepping down after 24 years of service. Arvind Krishna was appointed as the CEO of IBM in 2020. Shantanu Narayen was appointed in 2007 as the CEO of Adobe, and Nikesh Arora, Plato Alto CEO in 2018.