Why Indian CEOs rock and rule in the US

C-suites in corporate America are increasingly being occupied by Indians and people of Indian origin. Is there a secret formula — with ingredients sourced from the homeland — that equips them to rise to the top of the game in an opportunistic yet opportunities-driven market?

What did friends of an Indian undergrad flying to America for further studies tell him at the airport? CEO later, alligator! Implicit in this gag is the growing belief that any Indian student heading out to the United States or the western world these days has it in him to reach the pinnacle of not just academia, but also the business and corporate world. Stories of Indians or people of Indian origin going on to become CEOs of American and global companies are making headlines with such frequency that business schools and corporate magazines are routinely asking, in the form of studies or stories, what is it that makes Indians tick?

One may be presented with many answers to this question, but, first, it is important to place this phenomenon in perspective.

It is not as if every Indian who heads out west is some sparkling genius with fire in his belly and a 
C-suite on his mind. In the first place, not all of them come to study, much less study STEM subjects or go to business schools — the two common routes to CEO-dom. Many come not to study but just to immigrate, and even among the student and professional cohort, many go into other fields and toil away in anonymity. Some others are stuck in dead-end jobs or slave away to reach mid-level positions, and still others simply return home to India.

But even accounting for all this, there is a small sliver of Indians turned Indian-Americans who have become global icons for industry, perseverance, and eventual success as they reach the acme of the global corporate world, for long dominated by western men elevated by western companies. Of course, some of their success — and numbers — have been exaggerated and mythologised by a hyperbolic rah-rah brigade who populate WhatsApp university, such as the one claim that 30 per cent of Fortune 500 have Indian CEOs. Pure bunkum, of course. But even if it were 5 per cent (which would make it 25 CEOs and closer to the truth), it is a remarkable achievement for a cohort that forms only around 1 per cent of the US population.

According to a 2020 analysis by the group Boardroom Insiders, roughly 56 Fortune 500 CEOs (about 11 per cent) are immigrants. They come from 28 different countries, but the study reveals India has given America the 
most chief executives — a total of 10 in the year 2000 class of 
F500 companies, followed 
not-so-closely by Italy (4), the UK (3), Taiwan (3), Argentina (3) and Brazil (3).

Since then, there have been several more, including, most recently, Parag Agrawal at Twitter and Raj Subramaniam at FedEx, not to speak of those beyond America, such as Leena Nair, who was elevated to head the French luxury fashion house Chanel.

Several have also stepped down or moved on in recent years — notably PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, and Mastercard’s Ajay Banga, both trailblazers, not least because of their gender and religion (Banga is a turbaned Sikh).

They also stretch across industries and sectors now. Although the common perception is they are hitting the high spot in the tech industry (with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Google’s Sundar Pichai the most celebrated), you can see them in banking and finance, consulting, medicine and pharmaceuticals, fashion and apparel, logistics and infrastructure, and even in retail. Albertsons, America’s second-largest grocery major with more than 2,500 outlets, is now headed by Indian-American Vivek Sankaran. Last month, in one of the biggest milestones for the community, FedEx, the global courier major that has never had a CEO beyond its founder Fred Smith in the 50 years of its existence, promoted Raj Subramaniam to the corner suite.

As in many spheres, women are hopelessly underrepresented in the corporate stratosphere, accounting for only 41 of the 500 CEOs in the Fortune 500. But even here, Indian women made a splash — going back to Indra Nooyi’s pioneering stint as CEO of PepsiCo, shattering a glass ceiling for other women to follow. In 2020, India-born Canadian Sonia Syngal was named the president and CEO of apparel brand GAP.

A month later, Reshma Kewalramani became the first female CEO of a large US biotech company, Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Most recently, Leena Nair, a Keralite who grew up in Nagpur, was named to head 
Chanel, the family-controlled French fashion firm.

Of course, not all of them are infused with success and good press; some court notoriety. Late last year, Vishal Garg, CEO of the multi-billion-dollar mortgage finance company Better.com, earned the nickname “prophet of Zoom” after peremptorily firing 900 employees over a Zoom call on Christmas Eve. Other corporate honchos, notably Rajat Gupta, formerly of McKinsey, have gone to prison for alleged infractions. But they are more the exception than the rule. And right now, Indian CEOs rock — and rule.

So what is the secret sauce or magic formula that has elevated so many India-born or Indian-origin executives to the corner office? There is no one answer to the question that is still being studied in depth, but here are half-a-dozen reasons this writer has formulated after studying this subject for nearly 25 years — from the time he first observed it while writing the book The Horse That Flew: How India’s Silicon Gurus Spread Their Wings (HarperCollins, 2000).

For the most part, India sends its best and brightest to the west. Numbers matter, and the fact is that India sends the highest number of students to the west (particularly to the US, but Canada is now catching up), next only to China. The big difference between Indian and 
Chinese students is, thanks to its colonial legacy, Indians are a little more familiar and comfortable with English (or at least with Indlish, their version of it). Plus, they are at ease with an open society, democratic institutions, and a culture of debate and dissent. Many of them come through one of the most brutally competitive education system, illustrated by the legend of the IITs, which has an acceptance rate of less than 2 per cent. No surprise then that several CEOs, including Google’s Pichai, IBM’s Arvind Krishna, FedEx’s Subramaniam, and Albertsons’ Sankaran are IIT-ians.