 "Meet the Indian CEOs of some of the world's best-known companies")
British consumer goods major RB (Reckitt Benckiser) has appointed PepsiCo’s Laxman Narasimhan its global CEO, effective September 1. Narasimhan is the second Indian to be appointed to the position at the firm, and will succeed incumbent Rakesh Kapoor, who will leave the company at the end of 2019. A Pune university graduate, with an MA in German and International Studies and an MBA in Finance, both from the University of Pennsylvania, was named chief commercial officer at PepsiCo in March.
Sundar Pichai, who hails from Tamil Nadu, is the CEO of Google. He earned his degree in metallurgical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Pichai, who joined Google in 2004, led product management and innovation for tech giant's client software products, such as Google Chrome and Chrome OS, and oversaw the development of Gmail and Google Maps.
Indra Nooyi is serving on the board of directors of Amazon and is the second high-profile addition from India to the company's board. Nooyi was born into a Tamil-speaking family in Chennai and received a Post Graduate Programme Diploma from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. She had stepped down as PepsiCo's CEO in October 2018 after a 24-year tenure at the snack and beverage company. She had served as the company's CEO from 2006 to 2018.
Rajeev Suri was born in Delhi, but is a Singaporean citizen based in Espoo, Finland. He has a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology and worked for MNCs in India and Nigeria before joining Nokia. He became the CEO of Nokia after it sold its ailing mobile phone unit to Microsoft.
Satya Nadella hails from Hyderabad and has been with Microsoft for over 22 years. He was appointed CEO on February 4, 2014. Nadella succeeded Steve Ballmer, having been elevated from Executive Vice President of Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise group, a position in which he was in charge of building and running the company's Computing Platforms, Developer Tools and Cloud Computing Services.
Shantanu Narayen, who grew up in Hyderabad, joined Adobe Systems in January 1998 as Vice President and General Manager. He took over as President and COO of the company in 2005. In 2007, he was elevated to the position of Chief Executive Officer and became a directors on the company's board. Narayen, who started his career at Apple, also serves on the board of Dell Inc. and the advisory board of the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley.