The appointment of Arvind Krishna as the CEO of IBM is a significant addition to the club of Indian origin CEOS who are heading high-profile tech companies in the world.

Krishna joined IBM in 1990 and till now was the Senior vice-president for cloud and cognitive software, two big focus areas for IBM. He was instrumental in the growth of these two key areas of IBM’s business and led the company’s acquisition of Red Hat, an open source enterprise software company in 2018.

Krishna’s focus on cloud and AI technologies in IBM is one reason the company has reposed their faith by appointing him as CEO. They hope that this will help the company make a quicker transition to newer technologies like Google and Amazon and accelerate the company’s growth.

With Krishna’s track record this looks like a definite possibility. He should deliver much like the other Indian origin CEOS who have led their companies to success.

Novartis CEO Vasant (Vas) Narasimhan, who received the prestigious Genome Valley Excellence at BioAsia 2020 on Tuesday, went down the memory lane recalling how his grandfather was offered an internship in Ciba Geigy, the firm that would later become Novartis.

Expressing gratitude to his grandparents and parents for the sacrifices they made to see their children do well in life, the Indian-origin head of the global pharma major said his grandfather graduated from the Delhi University in Pharmacology.

“One of the most remarkable stories of his journey is shortly after graduating, he went to Pune to work in the pharmaceutical firms that were developing there. He was given an internship to actually go to Basel to Ciba Geigy which, of course, would later become Novartis, the company I am here as the CEO,” he said to loud applause from the packed hall in HICC here.

Mr. Narasimhan said the award was an incredible honour and it also was a time to reflect that he was standing on the “shoulders of giants, including being on this stage [because of his] grandparents”, who hailed from Tirupati, and his parents. He also played a few pictures of his family, including one of his grandparents.

Sharing a few perspectives on ‘Reimagining Medicine’ and some of the big trends shaping the pharma industry, he said cell and gene therapies are set to become the future of medicine. He also underscored the significance of improving access to medicines and use technology to improve life expectancy. Speaking on management techniques, he said the need was to have an ‘Unboss culture’. Noting that he would prefer Bhagavat Gita for lessons in leadership and man management, he said people drove performance.

The Novartis-Hyderabad centre is the second largest for the company and employed 6,000 of the India headcount of 8,000. The facility here played a pivotal role in bringing the latest innovations with the support of technology that could solve many problems of the world.

Stating this, he announced the launch of Biome India, a digital innovation hub in Hyderabad and the first such in Asia. Through Biome India, Novartis will engage with startups and innovators passionate about healthcare. The other Novartis Biomes are in San Francisco, Paris and London.

A release said the digital innovation hub here is aimed at boosting the connection and interaction between Novartis and partners from across the digital ecosystem, from nimble startups and academia to the biggest players in the industry. It will act as a bridge to the external ecosystem, enabling Novartis teams to better discover, develop and drive collaborations that transform innovative initiatives into impactful and scalable solutions for patients.

Who is Rishi Sunak, the man who in a stunning turn of events was appointed United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer less than a month before the first budget of Boris Johnson’s new government?
The former Goldman Sachs banker is 39 and has been viewed as a rising star in the Conservative Party, with the Conservative Home website anointing him “the next prime minister” earlier in the year. In July, he was made chief secretary to the Treasury — the second most important job in the finance ministry.

His appointment, and the dramatic circumstance in which his predecessor quit, have created a stir and raise questions about the direction of economic policy on the heels of Brexit.

Sajid Javid also had a background in finance but goes down in history as the shortest-serving finance minister in the country since 1970. He was seen as fiscal hawk, recently asking ministers to find cuts ahead of a spending review due later this year. Under the new guy, there may be what Citi calls a “Trump-style stimulus.” This debate comes after a decade of austerity under the Conservatives.

Rishi Sunak is a more pro-Brexit chancellor than Sajid Javid, who campaigned for Remain back in 2016 (Sunak was a Leaver). In 2017, he co-authored an article highlighting five benefits of Brexit, including striking new trade deals, improving regulation and being free of European Union (EU) state aid rules.

“It’s time to shout about that idealistic and hopeful vision for post-Brexit Britain,” he wrote. “Opportunities like these are what Brexit means to us.”

“His voting history shows he’s an ardent Brexiteer, supports reductions in corporation tax, cuts to capital gains tax and he’s gone on the record as favouring infrastructure investment,” the note said. “So this is either going to be a meeting of minds or Rishi Sunak will be the Prime Minister’s yes man living in Number 11.”

He’s frequently been sent out by the government to do the morning round of TV and radio interviews, a clear sign that he’s seen by Number 10 as a solid performer. Notably, he deputized for Johnson in televised leadership debates during the election campaign.

The Hindu son of a doctor and a pharmacist, Rishi Sunak attended Winchester College, one of the country’s most prestigious private schools, before studying at Oxford and Stanford Universities. After graduating, he worked for Goldman Sachs, before spending about three years at billionaire activist hedge fund manager Chris Hohn’s TCI Fund Management. Later, he moved on to join his TCI colleague Patrick Degorce’s hedge fund Theleme Partners.

He’s married to Akshata Murthy, the daughter of Indian billionaire, Infosys Ltd. co-founder Narayana Murthy. They have two daughters together. On his own website, Rishi Sunak lists his hobbies as keeping fit, soccer, cricket and the movies.

Indra Nooyi (born 28 October 1955) is an Indian American business executive and former CEO of PepsiCo.
She has consistently ranked among the world’s 100 most powerful women. In 2014, she was ranked at number 13 on the Forbes list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, and was ranked the 2nd most powerful woman on the Fortune list in 2015.
She serves on the board of Amazon, the International Cricket Council, and Schlumberger.
Career
Beginning her career in India, Nooyi held product manager positions at Johnson & Johnson and textile firm Mettur Beardsell. While attending Yale School of Management, Nooyi completed her summer internship with Booz Allen Hamilton. In 1980, Nooyi joined the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as a strategy consultant, and then worked at Motorola as Vice President and Director of Corporate Strategy and Planning,followed by a stint at Asea Brown Boveri.
PepsiCo Executive[edit] Nooyi joined PepsiCo in 1994, and was named CEO in 2006, replacing Steven Reinemund, becoming the fifth CEO in PepsiCo’s 44-year history. Nooyi has directed the company’s global strategy for more than a decade and led PepsiCo’s restructuring, including the 1997 divestiture of Tricon, now known as Yum! Brands. Tricon included companies like Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell under its umbrella [23]. The financial gains from this spinoff allowed the company to increase the pace of its share buyback strategy, thereby giving it more leverage to pursue future acquisitions without as much shareholder backlash. Nooyi also took the lead in the acquisition of Tropicana in 1998, and the merger with Quaker Oats Company, which also brought Gatorade in 2001. The $3.3 billion acquisition of Tropicana initially faced opposition from other PepsiCo executives and Wall Street critics. Acquiring Tropicana allowed PepsiCo to gain a competitive edge; Tropicana at the time captured 44% of the chilled orange juice segment, the fastest growing segment of the juice market, an especially positive metric when compared to Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid which captured less than half of Tropicana’s market share. The Quaker Oats Company’s ownership of Gatorade was a positive strategic move for PepsiCo, since Gatorade was responsible for 80% of sports drink sales at the time. Similar to the Tropicana acquisition, this strategic move gave PepsiCo leverage against Coca-Cola, owner of Powerade – second in the sports drink segment. PepsiCo’s annual net profit rose from $2.7 billion to $6.5 billion.
Nooyi was named on Wall Street Journal’s list of 50 women to watch in 2007 and 2008, and was listed among Time’s 100 Most Influential People in The World in 2007 and 2008. Forbes named her the #3 most powerful woman in 2008. In 2014, she was ranked #13 by Forbes. Fortune ranked her the #1 most powerful woman in business in 2009 and 2010. On 7 October 2010, Fortune magazine ranked her the 6th most powerful woman in the world. In Fortune’s Most Powerful Women List of 15 September 2015, Nooyi ranked 2nd.
Nooyi’s strategic redirection of PepsiCo has been largely successful. She reclassified PepsiCo’s products into three categories: “fun for you” (such as potato chips and regular soda), “better for you” (diet or low-fat versions of snacks and sodas), and “good for you” (items such as oatmeal). Her initiative was backed up with ample funding. She moved corporate spending away from junk foods and into the healthier alternatives, with the aim of improving the healthiness of even the “fun” offerings. In 2015, Nooyi removed aspartame from Diet Pepsi, furthering the shift towards healthier foods, despite lack of evidence of aspartame’s harmful effects.
Nooyi has stated an intent to develop a line of snacks marketed specifically for women, feeling that it is a hitherto unexplored category. In a radio interview, Nooyi stated that PepsiCo is getting ready to launch products designed and packaged according to women’s preferences, and based on behavioral differences in the way men and women consume snacks.
On 6 August 2018, PepsiCo Inc confirmed that Nooyi would step down as the CEO and Ramon Laguarta, a 22-year veteran of PepsiCo, would replace her on 3 October. Ramon Laguarta replaced her on that day, as well as becoming a member of the board of directors. However, Nooyi continued to serve as the chairwoman of the company until early 2019. During her tenure, the company’s sales grew 80%. Nooyi served as CEO for 12 years, 7 years longer than the average CEO tenure at large companies according to an Equilar study.
Connecticut public service
In 2019, Nooyi became the co-director of the newly created Connecticut Economic Resource Center, a public-private partnership with the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development. She will help draft the states new economic development strategy. Nooyi is a resident of Connecticut and a college classmate of Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont.
Memberships and associations
Nooyi is a Successor Fellow of the Yale Corporation. She serves as a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, International Rescue Committee, Catalyst and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Eisenhower Fellowships, and has served as Chairperson of the U.S.-India Business Council.
Nooyi serves as an Honorary Co-Chair for the World Justice Project. The World Justice Project works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.
In December 2016, Nooyi joined a business forum assembled by Donald Trump to provide strategic and policy advice on economic issues.

Dinesh C. Paliwal (born 17 December 1957) is an Indian-American businessman. Paliwal is known for being the President and CEO of Harman International Industries – a provider of audio and infotainment systems for the automotive, consumer and professional markets.
In addition to the Harman board, Paliwal serves as a member on the board of Nestlé, the Fortune Global 100 food and beverage company, and the boards of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Raytheon Company, both Fortune 200 organizations. He has served on the boards TYCO International, ADT and Embarq Corporation and is a member of the CEO Business Roundtable, the U.S.-India CEO Forum and serves on the board of the U.S. India Business Council (USIBC). He has served previously as Chairman of the National Foreign Trade Council, ABB India Ltd., Lummus Global (an oil and gas technology company) and as a Director for the US China Business Council, and International Swimming Hall of Fame. He also served for three years as Economic Advisor to the Governor of Guangdong Province, China.
Paliwal, a US citizen, has lived and worked in Australia, China, India, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States. He earned an MS degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (Roorkee, India); MS in Applied Science and Engineering and MBA in Finance from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio). In 2019, the board of trustees of Miami University also conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree to Dinesh for his ongoing efforts and contributions toward advancing the University’s leadership in business, technology, innovation and entrepreneurial endeavors. Before joining Harman he worked at the ABB Group as President Global Markets and Technology. During his 22 years with ABB, he held management positions in five countries and was instrumental in the company’s dramatic turnaround during the period 2002–2007.
In 2010, Paliwal was named Metro New York Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young, and received the Indian American Achiever Award by the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO). He received the Pinnacle Award as one of the Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business 2012 by Asian American Business Development Center. In 2014, Fortune Magazine named Paliwal in their “Businessperson of the Year” list. He was honored by the T. J. Martell Foundation in 2015 and also by Breakthrough, a global nonprofit, for his contributions in advancing women’s causes in 2016. In 2017, Paliwal was named to the inaugural Recode 100, recognizing the year’s most influential people in tech, business and media, and B’nai B’rith International honored him with its Distinguished Achievement Award. In the same year, Paliwal also received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and made a donation to Miami University’s Farmer School of Business along with his wife to create the Dinesh and Ila Paliwal Innovation Chair and the Dinesh and Ila Paliwal Scholarship.
Samsung announced its intent to acquire HARMAN for approximately $8 billion in November 2016, with Paliwal continuing to lead the company post-acquisition. The transaction was completed in March 2017.
Paliwal will step down on April 1 after nearly 13 years with the company as President & CEO of HARMAN and will remain as a Senior Advisor to the board of directors and to the new CEO, Michael Mauser, until December of 2020.

Ajaypal “Ajay” Singh Banga (born 1960) is an Indian-American business executive. He is the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Mastercard. Mastercard announced in April 2010 that Banga, previously its president and chief operating officer, would become president and chief executive officer, effective July 1, 2010, and a member of the board of directors, effective immediately.
Banga succeeded Robert W. Selander, who had been CEO since March 1997.
In February 2015, President Barack Obama appointed Banga to serve as a member of the President’s Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations.
Banga is the chairman of the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC) representing more than 300 of the largest international companies investing in India. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Dow Chemical Company; member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and member of International Business Council of the World Economic Forum.
The Government of India awarded him the civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2016.
Career
Beginning his business career with Nestlé in 1981, Banga spent the next 13 years working in jobs spanning sales, marketing, and general management. He later joined PepsiCo and was involved in the launch of its international fast food franchises in India as the economy liberalized.
Banga was vice chairman of the board of trustees of the New York Hall of Science and a board member of the National Urban League. He was formerly a business sponsor of Citi’s African heritage network – NYC.
Banga has a keen interest in social development issues, and over the period from 2005 to mid-2009, he spearheaded Citi’s strategy in the microfinance sector across the world.
Banga is a regular speaker at various FinTech conferences and various leadership conferences. He also appeared on the Mad Money show hosted by Jim Cramer on Thursday, 6 Nov 2014.
Banga, was the keynote speaker at the NYU Stern 2014 Graduate Convocation on May 22, 2014, where he spoke about the importance of diversity in driving innovation and leadership. He also was a keynote speaker for his alma mater, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, during the Class of 2015’s convocation.

Satya Narayana Nadella (born 19 August 1967) is an Indian American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014. Before becoming CEO, he was the executive vice president of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise group, responsible for building and running the company’s computing platforms.

Career
Sun Microsystems
Nadella worked at Sun Microsystems as a member of its technology staff prior to joining Microsoft in 1992.
Microsoft
At Microsoft, Nadella has led major projects that included the company’s move to cloud computing and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world.
Nadella worked as the senior vice-president of Research and Development (R&D) for the Online Services Division and vice-president of the Microsoft Business Division. Later, he was made the president of Microsoft’s $19 billion Server and Tools Business and led a transformation of the company’s business and technology culture from client services to cloud infrastructure and services. He has been credited for helping bring Microsoft’s database, Windows Server and developer tools to its Azure cloud. The revenue from Cloud Services grew to $20.3 billion in June 2013 from $16.6 billion when he took over in 2011.He received $84.5 million in 2016 pay.
Nadella’s 2013 base salary was nearly $700,000, for a total compensation, with stock bonuses, of $17.6 million.
Previous positions held by Nadella include:
• President of the Server & Tools Division (9 February 2011 – February 2014)
• Senior Vice-President of Research and Development for the Online Services Division (March 2007 – February 2011)
• Vice-President of the Business Division
• Corporate Vice-President of Business Solutions and Search & Advertising Platform Group
• Executive Vice-President of Cloud and Enterprise group
On 4 February 2014, Nadella was announced as the new CEO of Microsoft, the third chief executive in the company’s history, following Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
In October 2014, Nadella courted controversy when he made a statement that women should not ask for a raise and should trust the system.The statement was made while he was attending an event on Women in Computing in Phoenix, AZ. Nadella was roundly criticised for the statement and he apologised later on Twitter. He later sent an email to Microsoft employees admitting he was “Completely wrong”.
Nadella changed the company’s direction after becoming CEO. His tenure has emphasized openness to working with companies and technologies with which Microsoft also competes, including Apple Inc. Salesforce, IBM, and Dropbox In contrast to previous Microsoft campaigns against the Linux operating system, Nadella proclaimed that “Microsoft Linux”, and in 2016, Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member.
Under Nadella Microsoft revised its mission statement to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more”. In comparison to founder Bill Gates’s “a PC on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software”, Nadella says that it is an enduring mission, rather than a temporal goal. His key goal has been transforming Microsoft’s corporate culture into one that values continual learning and growth. He has cited the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck as inspiration for this philosophy around a “growth mindset”.
Nadella’s leadership of Microsoft included a series of high-profile acquisitions of other companies, to redirect Microsoft’s focus. His first major acquisition was of Mojang, a Swedish game company best known for the popular freeform computer building game Minecraft, in late 2014, for $2.5 billion. Minecraft was notably a cross-platform game, with versions running on Apple’s iOS mobile devices, and the Sony PlayStation dedicated gaming console, as well as Microsoft’s Xbox. He followed that by purchasing Xamarin and LinkedIn in 2016, then GitHub in 2018.
In the years since becoming CEO, Nadella is viewed as having done well with Microsoft stock having tripled by September 2018, with a 27% annual growth rate. In December 2018, Comparably called him the best CEO of a large company in the United States, citing anonymous Nadella employee reviews.
Awards and recognition
In 2019, Nadella was named Financial Times (FT) Person of the Year, “Microsoft was at risk of technological irrelevance but the chief executive has presided over an era of stunning wealth creation”.

Pichai Sundararajan (born June 10, 1972), also known as Sundar Pichai is an Indian American business executive, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and it’s subsidiary Google LLC. Pichai began his career as a materials engineer and joined Google as a management executive in 2004. He rose to become the company’s Product Chief, then Google’s CEO in 2015, as part of the restructuring process that made Alphabet Inc. into Google’s parent company. In December 2019, he additionally became CEO of Alphabet Inc.

Career

Pichai worked in engineering and product management at Applied Materials and in management consulting at McKinsey & Company, Pichai joined Google in 2004, where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google’s client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive. He went on to oversee the development of other applications such as Gmail and Google Maps. On November 19, 2009, Pichai gave a demonstration of Chrome OS; the Chromebook was released for trial and testing in 2011, and released to the public in 2012. On May 20, 2010, he announced the open-sourcing of the new video codec VP8 by Google and introduced the new video format, WebM
On March 13, 2013, Pichai added Android to the list of Google products that he oversees. Android was formerly managed by Andy Rubin. He was a director of Jive Software from April 2011 to July 30, 2013. Pichai was selected to become the next CEO of Google on August 10, 2015 after previously being appointed Product Chief by CEO, Larry Page. On October 24, 2015 he stepped into the new position at the completion of the formation of Alphabet Inc., the new holding company for the Google company family.
Pichai had been suggested as a contender for Microsoft’s CEO in 2014, a position that was eventually given to Satya Nadella.
In August 2017, Pichai drew publicity for firing a Google employee who wrote a ten-page manifesto criticizing the company’s diversity policies and arguing that “distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and … these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership”. While noting that the manifesto raised a number of issues that are open to debate, Pichai said in a memo to Google employees that “to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK”.
In December 2017, Pichai was a speaker at the World Internet Conference in China, where he stated that “a lot of work Google does is to help Chinese companies. There are many small and medium-sized businesses in China who take advantage of Google to get their products to many other countries outside of China.

U.S. Congress testimony
On December 11, 2018, Pichai testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on a wide range of Google-related issues such as the alleged, potential political bias on Google’s platforms, the company’s alleged plans for a “censored search app” in China, and its privacy practices. Pichai, in response, stated that Google employees cannot influence search results. He also stated that Google users can opt out of having their data collected and that “there are no current plans for a censored search engine” in China. Wired’s Issie Lapowsky characterized Pichai’s appearance before the committee as one “major missed opportunity,” since, as she wrote, its members “staked out opposite sides of a partisan battle,” and presented to the public “a foreboding reminder of Congress’s continued technological ignorance.”