A decade ago, surely few of us would think that the leaders of several of the most important companies in terms of economy and influence in the world were of Indian origin. But today it is a reality.
Sundar Pichai in Google, Satya Nadella at Microsoft or Parag Agrawal (at least while Musk thinks about it) on Twitter are the spearhead of a prototype manager, the CEO of Indian origin, who has become a constant in many other companies.
But, How did we get here? Indian immigration in the United States is a constant that has its roots almost in the very foundation of their nation. In fact, it is an aspect inherited from British colonialism. For centuries, Indian immigrants who arrived in the United Kingdom, later did so in the United States.
During the 1950s and 1960s a new generation of immigrants was produced. In total, the US census currently records a population of 4.1 million American Indians, 1.4% of the total population. Their roots are greater than the percentage, something that is seen, sadly, in the increasingly frequent cases of Indian citizens who currently try to enter the United States through the border with Mexico to contact one of their relatives in search for a better future.
But none of these immigration flows come largely from the managers we pay attention to in this text. Both the current CEOs of Twitter, Google and Microsoft were born and raised in India, to later travel to the United States where he extended his training in engineering. They are, so to speak, brains signed from training.
Before them, however, the predecessor must be found in a woman and in a company outside of technology. Indra Nooyi was CEO of PepsiCO from 2006 to 2018setting a precedent in a company that had historically had open arms to foreign talent and continues to do so (as an example, its current CEO is the Spanish Ramón Laguarta).
But the CEOs of the best-known BigTechs are not the only ones. Here is a list to realize how common it has become:
Shantanu Narayen, Adobe
Sundar Pichai, Alphabet
Satya Nadella, Microsoft
Rajeev Suri, Nokia
Punit Renjen, Deloitte
Vasant Narasimhan, Novartis
Ajaypal Singh Banga, Mastercard
Between immigration and the power of its institutions
There are several points that explain how these profiles have become commonplace. Looking for common points one of them is found: most have been trained at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)public institutions of the country but also elite institutions founded in the 50s and that have become an international benchmark.
For years, Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) graduates have been treated like the holy grail in all sectors of India, most notably in its startup ecosystem. But as the sector matures, this seems to be becoming a problem.
A degree from an elite institute is often a ticket to success in the Indian tech startup sector, but also to further study in the United States.
This ecosystem in part has also been transferred to the migrant population in the United States. American Indians are among the most educated in the US; according to Pew Research, 77.5% had a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2016 – the highest proportion of any country of origin – compared to 31.6% of native-born Americans. At the graduate level, in recent decades, foreign-born students have filled the gap for fewer Americans studying computer science and engineering.
“When (non-IIT-IIM founders) get attention or funding, it’s usually because they already have a successful product or track record. The IIT-IIM founders tend to attract attention even before that phase”, said Prasanto K Roy, who works with local organizations such as The Indus Entrepreneurs, in a report on these schools of Quartz.
Part of this virtuous circle also has its B side: the first promoters of startups in India, local funds, usually have former students from these centers on their board, which leads them to favor those they recognize as their equals, in a somewhat obscure memory of the caste system so marked by their society. “A chaiwala (a tea seller) can be Prime Minister in India, but he will not receive funding,” says another expert consulted.
But that good educational base does not seem to be the only one. Mitra Kalita, an opinion editor for CNN and also of Indian origin, argued in a Article some more cultural points of view that may also be behind this reality.
Family work and a culture of gratitude towards their educators seems to be one of them. When Indra Nooyi was appointed CEO of PepsiCo, her colleagues visited her mother’s home in India to congratulate her. That gave Nooyi, who left office in 2018, an idea: write thank you cards to the parents of Pepsi’s star workers. “I was a product of my upbringing,” she said. “It occurred to me that I had never thanked the parents of my executives for their son’s gift to PepsiCo.”
There also seems to be a certain way of understanding time and the relationship with work that is different. In the West we tend to be sequential and focus on the binary; there is leisure and work.
“What I try to do is harmonize what I care deeply about, my deep interests, with my work”
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
Indian managers seem to have another perception rooted in the same Hindu way of understanding time, more synchronously than sequentially. Roughly explained: everything happens at once, not one thing after another.
This theory coincides with Satya Nadella’s approach when it comes to defining how he sees the balance between life and work. “What I try to do is harmonize what I care deeply about, my deep interests, with my work,” he said in a statement. interview. “I see Microsoft as a platform that allows me to pursue my own passions. And that makes a lot of sense to me, and that, to me, is the ultimate form of relaxation.” A way of understanding work that, like its pros and cons, is also part of what has made Indian leaders a constant in Silicon Valley today.