Sundar Pichai: Some of the prominent tech behemoths with CEOs of Indian descent are Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and IBM. Neal Mohan is slated to succeed Susan Wojcicki as the new CEO of the online video-sharing platform YouTube, joining the league in the most recent tech sector news. Neal Mohan, who serves as the chief product officer at the moment, has been connected to Google since 2008, which owns YouTube.
Education and Parallels Among Top Tech Leaders
He now waits in line behind executives like Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google LLC and Alphabet Inc., Shantanu Narayan, CEO of Adobe Systems, and others in charge of leading tech giants in American firms. He is a Stanford University engineering graduate who shares remarkable similarities with the other CEOs of significant IT companies. Aside from being of Indian descent, they have all graduated from prestigious colleges with degrees in engineering and business administration.
Exploring the Phenomenon of Indian Influence in US Tech Companies
Approximately 6% of the workers in Silicon Valley and 1% of the entire US population are people with Indian ancestry. Despite this, they control US tech businesses. Midday Online spoke with IT experts Swastik Shrey and Ankita Dhakar about this trend to better understand what it is about Indians that attracts American technology companies.
Here are the top five reasons why leading tech companies in the US are choosing CEOs of Indian descent
- High educational qualifications: India is the home of a large number of engineers and computer wizards who are obsessed with technology. Numerous Indian tech CEOs have earned degrees from esteemed institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, which has campuses across India in places like Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, and more. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US is comparable to the IITs in India. “Almost all Indian-origin executives have studied in IITs at some point. These universities have very low acceptance rates and admissions into the IITs is like Ivy League admissions on steroids”, shares Ankitra Dhakar, the Managing Director at Security Lit. These institutions provide students with the best technical education while also preparing them for a global workforce. In 1996, Neal Mohan received his electrical engineering bachelor’s degree from Stanford University. Later, in 2005, he registered for a General Management master’s programme at Stanford University School of Business. Many Indians get the chance to lead IT big enterprises by attending top graduate colleges. It only needs perseverance in studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to follow the predetermined path.
- Indians are a resilient breed: India, the second most populous nation, with 1.4 billion residents. It is predicted to surpass China in terms of population in a few years. India has come a long way, yet its people continue to face enormous obstacles due to poverty. A minimum wage of INR 178 (as established by the Ministry of Labour and Employment) is not enough to support the nearly one-quarter of the population who are living in poverty. Since joining Google, Neal Mohan has developed a reputation for being a troubleshooter. His team introduced the “YouTube Partner Programme” (YPP) at the beginning of February to make it possible for creators to monetize their work on YouTube. It provides a means for producers to monetize their video material, cultivate communities, and convert their hobbies into successful businesses.
- Indians account for the highest awardees of H1B Visa: People with specialised skills are favoured by the American immigration system. Sundar Pichai entered the US on an H1B Visa to begin working after receiving his electrical engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur. The H1B Visa enables American businesses to hire foreign workers, many of whom have credentials in IT. Nearly 75% of these visas were granted by the US government to Indian citizens in 2020. China performed poorly in comparison, receiving only 12% of these visas.
- Indians are diligent workers: Neal Mohan said on his LinkedIn about redesigning YouTube’s user interfac, “When YouTube first started, the viewer experience was pretty simple and limited to a desktop. Today we’re innovating for complex and sophisticated interactions across every device. We started by addressing top visual elements on our platform: from buttons and video thumbnails to colour and light during playback. Hundreds of prototypes were created and tested with tens of thousands of users, and these data points were used to inform our design decisions.”
- Indians remain empathetic in the face of adversity: There is a vast pool of talent in India that is permanently emigrating. With 17.5 million people residing abroad, India has the most migrants overall, according to the UN. Additionally, more Indians will renounce their passports in favour of obtaining American citizenship in 2020. A new nation move is a humble experience. An IT worker at Amazon named Riddhima Malviya describes her experience relocating to the United States. She dealt with a range of difficulties related to being an Indian in a foreign country. This required her to become familiar with the workplace culture, integrate into the neighbourhood, change her eating habits, and deal with homesickness.
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