This Article is From Nov 30, 2021

Huge Applause For Indian Talent After Parag Agrawal, 37, Named Twitter CEO

Indian CEOs won hearty applause on Twitter soon after it was revealed that Parag Agrawal, an IIT Bombay graduate, would take over after Jack Dorsey.

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India News

Parag Agrawal, an IIT Bombay graduate, would take over after Jack Dorsey.

New Delhi:

Twitter's new CEO Parag Agrawal, 37, joins a growing club of Indians heading global tech giants. Almost all prominent tech companies are headed by Indians, especially IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) alums and the list was widely shared on social media.

Indian CEOs won hearty applause on Twitter soon after it was revealed that Parag Agrawal, an IIT Bombay graduate, would take over after Jack Dorsey.

One of the first to put it out was Stripe CEO Patrick Collison.

"Google, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, and now Twitter run by CEOs who grew up in India. Wonderful to watch the amazing success of Indians in the technology world and a good reminder of the opportunity America offers to immigrants. (Congrats, @paraga!)," Mr Collison tweeted.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk reacted to the tweet, saying: "USA benefits greatly from Indian talent!" 

Industrialist Anand Mahindra also replied to the tweet, coming up with the phrase "Indian CEO virus".

"This is one pandemic that we are happy & proud to say originated in India. It's the Indian CEO Virus... No vaccine against it," Anand Mahindra tweeted with a smiley.

Gautam Adani called it a great moment for India's "depth of talent" and noted the rise of yet another Indian in the digital world.

Mr Adani also shared Parag Agrawal's first email to Twitter employees after becoming CEO.

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Parag Agrawal joined Twitter in 2011 and was Chief Technology Officer (CTO) before this.

After studying at IIT-Bombay, he went on to complete his PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University.

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Before him, the two best known Indians in the tech world were Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Mr Pichai, an IIT-Kharagpur graduate, took over as Google CEO in 2015 and became the CEO of its parent company Alphabet in 2019.

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Satya Nadella studied in the Manipal Institute of Technology before going to Stanford and Wharton.

Other Indians at the helm of big tech are Arvind Krishna (IBM), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe) and Raghu Raghuram (VMWare), Twitter pointed out.

Flash memory storage company SanDisk and security firm Palo Alto Networks are also headed by Indians. Shantanu Narayen took over as Adobe CEO in 2007.

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Nikesh Arora is the CEO of Palo Alto Networks.

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