Recently, the premier business magazine, Forbes has come up with a list of people with Indian origin who are making it big in the American corporate world! Forbes’ list of, ‘Eight Indian CEOs At Big US Companies’ has proved that how Indians are writing success stories in the Corporate America.
Madras-born PepsiCo’s Chief Executive, Indira Nooyi gains the top slot on the list. Nooyi is a prominent Indian immigrant in the US and has been an inevitable part of the country’s corporate world.
After the PepsiCo’s CEO, Forbes listed Vikram Pandit on the second position. The Nagpur-born CEO of Wall Street-based Citigroup is an eminent corporate figure in the US. Before joining the Citigroup, Pandit served the Morgan Stanley’s fixed income and capital markets businesses and investment banking as President. He also co-founded and was the chairperson of Old Lane Partners.
Cognizant Technology Solutions’ head Francisco D’Souza holds the third slot. D’Souza was born in Kenya, however his grandparents were the natives of Goa, India. He joined the corporation in the year 1994, the year when the latter was founded. Within the three years of serving, he became the director of North American operations in Cognizant.
Fourth on the list is Shantanu Narayen, who leads the computer software company, Adobe Systems. Surya Mohapatra, Dinesh Paliwal, Jai P. Nagarkatti and Abhijit Talwalkar in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eight slots follow Narayen respectively.
Surya Mohapatra is amongst those who have been vital in plotting growth strategy for their respective companies. The CEO of Quest Diagnostics was instrumental in raising $750 million from the capital markets through acquisitions.
The Chief of Harman International, Dinesh Paliwal is a native of famous Indian city, Agra. He joined the sound-systems company as the CEO in the year 2007.
Jai P. Nagarkatti has been serving Sigma-Aldrich Corporation as CEO since January 1, 2006. Prior to this, he served the company as President and COO till December 31, 2005. Nagarkatti is also a director in Sigma-Aldrich.
Abhijit Talwalkar is the Chief Executive Officer of California-based electronics company, LSI Corporation. Earlier, Talwalkar had served Intel’s digital enterprise group, as well as Bipolar Integrated Technology Inc., Sequent Computer Systems and Lattice Semiconductor Inc.
Forbes caught Richard Herman, co-author of a book on migrants to the US, saying that Indians immigrating to the US are far superior to the immigrants of other countries, thanks to their English language skills, as well as advanced education that they bring to the nation! However, Forbes maintains that regardless of the personal success stories, the number immigrants leading corporate America, including Indians and others is still very small. To this, Herman said that the number is growing and quite satisfying, as compared to the data ten years ago.
