Indian Engineers Who Went On To Do Their Masters Abroad And Made It Big
Indians have been successful in numerous fields abroad. With their excellent managerial skills, innovation ability, work ethics, and a great education, they have managed to make their mark globally. Especially in fields like engineering and technology, Indians have taken over the world with their expertise. Hailing from small cities and doing their BE from Indian Institutes did not stop these individuals from dreaming big and making global strides.
Some of these notable personalities are:
- 1. Sundar Pichai- CEO, Google
- 2. Satya Nadella- CEO, Microsoft
- 3. Padmasree Warrior- Chief Tech Officer, Cisco Systems
- 4. Shantanu Narayen – CEO Adobe
- 5. Ajit Jain- VC of Insurance Operations, Berkshire Hathaway
- 6. Vinod Khosla, CEO Khosla Ventures
Sundar Pichai is an Indian- American business executive and the current CEO of Google LLC. He was born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu and earned his Bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering from IIT, Kharagpur. He holds an MS in material sciences and engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Wharton.
Initially, he worked at McKinsey & Co. before joining Google in 2004. He led the product management and Innovation team and developed applications such as Gmail, Google Maps and Google Drive. He was one of the contenders for CEO position at Microsoft before it was given to Satya Nadella.
Satya Narayana Nadella is an American business executive and currently the CEO of tech giant Microsoft. Coming from Hyderabad, Nadella pursued his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering in Manipal Institute of Technology and later went on to do his MS in computer science at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. He also received an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth while working at Microsoft.
After becoming the CEO, he totally turned the company around, giving a tough competition to Apple. The Microsoft stock tripled under his leadership and the introduction of Window 10 became a massive success globally. He is regarded as one of the best CEOs Microsoft ever had.
Padmasree Warrior is the former CEO of NIO U.S and currently works as the CTO at Cisco Systems. She was born and raised in Vijaywada, Andhra Pradesh where she went to the Children’s Montessori School and Maris Stella College. She holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from IIT, Delhi. She received her Master’s degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University.
Warrior joined Motorola in 1984 where she served as the CTO in their Semiconductor Products Sector. In 2007 she left Motorola and joined Cisco Systems as their Chief Technology Officer. Fortune Magazine listed her as one of the four rising stars on its Most Powerful Women list. The Economic Times ranked her 11th on the Most Influential Global Indian list.
Shantanu Narayen is the chairperson and CEO of Adobe Incorporation who was recently awarded Padma Shri, the greatest Indian civilian honor. He grew up in Tamil Nadu and pursued Engineering in Electronics and Communication at Osmania University in Hyderabad. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from the Bowling Green State University, Ohio.
He started his career at Apple before founding Pictra Inc, the company which pioneered the concept of Digital photo sharing. He later joined Adobe and became the CEO in 2007. Under his guidance, Adobe became a Fortune 400 company. Narayen was ranked 12 on Fortune’s ‘Businessperson of the Year’ list in 2018. He was also named the ‘Global Indian of the Year’ by the Economic Times of India.
Ajit Jain, the current VC of Insurance Operations for the multinational conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway was born in Orissa. He graduated from IIT Kharagpur with a BTech degree in Mechanical Engineering. Before pursuing an MBA from Harvard University, he worked at IBM as a salesperson for their data-processing operations.
Jain has been working at Berkshire Hathaway for three decades and there are talks of him becoming the CEO in the near future. He handles several reinsurance businesses in the billion-dollar company.
Vinod Khosla is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. He holds a degree in electrical engineering from IIT, Delhi, a master’s in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from Stanford GSB.
Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems which is an acronym that stands for Stanford University Network which he founded along with his Stanford peers. He formed his own venture capital organization, Khosla Ventures in 2004. Khosla has also founded a number of other businesses and was involved in the founding of Daisy Systems.
