Satya Nadella takes business size of top-10 India-origin CEOs to $350 billion

With Satya Nadella becoming chief executive of software giant Microsoft, 10 Indian-origin persons holding top posts at global corporations manage businesses worth about $350 billion, or around Rs 21.7 lakh crore (based on $1 at Rs 62).

Mr Nadella, the Hyderabad-born cricket-loving, engineering executive, who has been with Microsoft for over 20 years, has joined the league of Indra Nooyi, Lakshmi Mittal, Anshu Jain and Ivan Menzes, among many other Indian-origin persons at the helm at large conglomerates headquartered abroad.

There are many other Indians heading the businesses at relatively smaller companies abroad, especially in the IT sector, but at least 12 large companies have got India-born chief executives.

International magazine Time once termed CEOs as India's leading "export" and said that the subcontinent could be "the ideal training ground for global bosses".

Interestingly, the total size of businesses managed by just 10 Indian-origin CEOs globally exceed the total exports from India, which stood at about $300 billion, or Rs 18.6 lakh crore, in the last fiscal year (FY13) and is estimated to be around $325 billion in the current fiscal year (FY14) that ends in March.

The big conglomerations include Microsoft, PepsiCo, ArcelorMittal, Deutsche Bank, Diageo, Reckitt Benckiser (Rakesh Kapoor), MasterCard (Ajay Banga), DBS Group Holdings (Piyush Gupta), SanDisk (Sanjay Mehrotra), Global Foudries (Sanjay Jha) and Adobe (Shantanu Narayen).

Anshu Jain serves as co-CEO of Germany's Deutsche Bank, while Mr Menezes last year took over as chief of UK-based liquor giant Diageo.

While Microsoft recorded a turnover of over $78 billion (Rs 4,83,600 crore) last year, ArcelorMittal's annual revenue stood at $84 billion (Rs 5,20,800 crore), down from over $93 billion in 2011 and over $100 billion a few years ago. Among large companies, PepsiCo commands $66-billion turnover, while Deutsche Bank has over $43 billion and Diageo over $18 billion.

Among non-promoter CEOs, Mr Nadella now runs the largest company among those run by Indian-origin individuals.

In the past, giants like Citigroup, Vodafone and Motorola have also had Indian-origin CEOs.

According to human resource experts, professionals in India have become global professionals. The technical skills and the behavioural patterns of Indians executives make them very much adaptable to any kind of situation they come across.

Experts believe that Indians' focus on good education and ability to work in difficult situations is aiding to this rising trend and more and more Indians could rise to top positions at global companies in the near future.