Tracking South Asian Heads of U.S. Companies
This list is a work in progress. We need your help. Please take a
look below and help us with better information by adding to the
comments section or e-mailing saja[at]columbia.edu.
South Asian CEOs in MAJOR US companies ("major" of course, is subjective; $1-billion-plus companies and/or brands that are widely known, perhaps? Please help us add more here):
CURRENT AMERICAN CEOs & PRESIDENTS
- Shumeet Banerji, CEO, Booz & Company, the new $1 billion-plus spin-off of Booz Allen Hamilton
- Francisco D'Souza, CEO, Cognizant ($2.8 billion company, one of the NASDAQ-100 and S&P 500); founded in 1994 by Kumar Mahadeva.
- Raj Gupta, chairman and CEO, Rohm & Haas, an $8-billion specialty materials company
- Vinod Gupta, CEO of InfoUSA, a $400 million company (formerly known as American Business Information)
- Sanjay Jha, co-CEO, Motorola - 2007 sales: $33.6 billion (Aug. 2008); NOTE: he was the highest paid CEO in American in March 2010, with a total pay package of $104 million).
- Farooq Kathwari, CEO, Ethan Allen - leading furniture maker, with sales of $1 billion, 310 stores and 21 manufacturing plants.
- Sara Mathew, president, Dun & Bradstreet (Feb. 2009); becomes CEO & chairman July 1, 2010
- Indra Nooyi, CEO, PepsiCo - $33 billion in sales (Aug. 2006)
- Vikram Pandit, CEO, Citigroup - world's largest financial services company (Dec. 2007)
- Deven Sharma, president, Standard & Poor's (Aug. 2007)
FORMER CEOs
- Ramani Ayer, former chairman and CEO, Hartford Financial Group, a $27-billion financial services company (retired October 1, 2009)
- Rono Dutta, former president, United Airlines
- Rakesh Gangwal, former CEO, USAirways
- Rajat Gupta, former managing partner, McKinsey & Co. (1994-2004)
- Umang Gupta, former CEO of Gupta Corporation, a database company he took public in 1993; now chairman of Keynote Systems
- Sanjay Kumar, former CEO of Computer Associates and co-owner of New York Islanders hockey team (2000-2004)
- Bhaskar Menon, former chairman and CEO of EMI International, one of the Big Four record labels; artists include the Beatles, Deep Purple, Cliff Richard, Duran Duran, Beastie Boys, Norah Jones, etc. (appointed 1978; retired several years ago; now a consultant to the industry)
- Meeta Vyas, former CEO, Signature Brands - Betty Crocker, Cake Mate, etc (first South Asian woman to become CEO of publicly traded company; first South Asian to head a $1B business)
- Jim Wadia, former CEO, Arthur Andersen (which spun off Accenture in 2000)
LARGE-FIRM CEOs OUTSIDE SOUTH ASIA
- Lakshmi Mittal, CEO of ArcelorMittal, world's largest steel company (market cap: $106 billion)
- Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, one of world's largest telecom companies, from (market cap: $120 billion)
Who else? If you have updates, please e-mail saja@columbia.edu or post your comments below.
