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Business Standard
a day ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Lavish homes left by fleeing Gupta brothers up for sale in South Africa
South Africa is selling off three multimillion rand mansions owned by the Gupta brothers, a trio of influential Indian-born businessmen at the center of a corruption scandal that triggered the country's worst political and economic crisis since the end of Apartheid. Atul, Rajesh and Ajay Gupta began buying the properties in Thursday's auction in 2006. There, in Saxonwold, one of Johannesburg's oldest and most affluent neighborhoods, they entertained top politicians and businessmen for at least a decade. But as their public profile grew, so did allegations that they exerted undue influence over the state for their own enrichment. Protesters gathered regularly outside the compound's high walls and perimeter fences, demanding accountability. The brothers fled to Dubai shortly before the ruling African National Congress in 2018 forced Jacob Zuma to quit as president to stem a loss in electoral support, partly due to his links to the family. Their compound has been largely empty ever since. Protected by private armed guards, it became a symbol among opposition members and activists of the staggering levels of corruption in the country, and the challenges in holding those implicated in that corruption to account. President Cyril Ramaphosa has estimated that more than 500 billion rand ($28 billion) was plundered during his predecessor's near nine-year tenure and said that tackling graft — which has hobbled key institutions such as state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. and freight rail and ports operator Transnet SOC Ltd — is a priority. But to date, no senior official has been successfully prosecuted in connection to it. During a Saturday viewing of the compound organized by the auction house, Park Village Auctions, traces of the lavish lifestyle the brothers led in Africa's richest city were on display: a Cartier jewelry catalog, a Royal Caribbean cruise brochure and a hand-written inventory of fine whiskeys and champagne. Elsewhere green water fills an indoor pool, and moss grows on water features and a mini cricket pitch. Deep cracks run through window panes. Paint and plaster are peeling off walls. And the thatched roof of an outdoor bar is in tatters. The neglect means that although the three properties — which have different title deeds and will be auctioned separately — have a combined municipal value of about 64 million rand, they're likely to sell at a 'bargain price,' according to auctioneer Clive Lazarus. Individual residences in the neighborhood can sell for as much as 20 million rand, he said. Proceeds from the sale will help settle claims by creditors since Confident Concept Pty Ltd., the Gupta-linked company that owns the properties, entered into a local form of bankruptcy protection in 2018. The auction had been held up because it was in litigation over financial distress and disputes about property development with local authorities. The compound's role as the epicenter in what became known as 'state capture' was highlighted during a probe led by former chief justice Raymond Zondo, which began in 2018 and implicated more than 1,400 persons and entities. His panel heard that the brothers held clandestine meetings in their homes, where many people were offered kickbacks to help the family and their associates influence government decision making and secure contracts. The Guptas and Zuma have denied any wrongdoing. Atul was the first of the brothers to arrive from India in South Africa in 1993, just as the country was transitioning to democracy. Dispatched to the continent in search of fortune by his father, a trader of spices and soapstone powders, he founded Sahara Computers Ltd., a year later. The company, an importer and distributor of Windows PCs, grew and his brothers joined him. A single introduction to a member of the new political elite paved the way for the Guptas to mingle in powerful circles. During the viewing of the mansions, a safe that appeared to be forced open, boxes of prescription medicine, as well as spices and cupboards piled high with dinnerware suggested the Guptas left South Africa in haste. Atul and Rajesh — who are wanted in South Africa on charges including money laundering and fraud, and sanctioned by both the US and UK government — were arrested in United Arab Emirates in 2022. That's after Interpol placed them on its most-wanted list. But a UAE court, in 2023, denied South Africa's plea to extradite the brothers and their arrest warrant was canceled. South Africa provisionally withdrew its arrest warrant for Ajay in 2019, according to Reuters. Spokespersons for the President and Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development referred questions, including about plans to extradite the fugitive brothers and prosecute others implicated in graft, to the National Prosecuting Authority. The Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, a unit of the National Prosecuting Authority, declined to answer questions. A fourth property in the compound still bears a 'SAHARA ESTATE' sign on the outer wall but it is not up for auction this week. It's registered to a separate company linked to the family, according to Deeds Office data. The three mansions in the auction are zoned for residential use. Should the new owners want to use them for something else, they'd have to apply for permits, which aren't guaranteed to be approved. For Lumkile Mondi, a senior economics lecturer at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, the auction is an important step but challenges lie ahead. 'The reality is that when corruption, fraud, and destruction happens, it doesn't only take place the top, it filters down to other levels,' he said. 'For many South Africans, the biggest impact has been on the supply of water, electricity and fixing of roads. To change that requires serious commitment and it's going to take a long, long time before we get things right.'
Newsweek
2 days ago
- Business
- Newsweek
Indian CEOs in America Are More Common Than Ever—What Sets Them Apart?
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. "The old joke was you could not become a CEO in the U.S. if you are Indian," Eric Garcetti, then U.S. ambassador to India, remarked last year during an interview in New Delhi. "Now the joke is you cannot become a CEO in America if you are not Indian." The stunning global business success of the Indian diaspora is no joking matter. Satya Nadella runs Microsoft, Sundar Pichai leads Google, Leena Nair heads Chanel, Raj Subramaniam pilots FedEx and, until last year, Laxman Narasimhan led Starbucks. All told, on this year's edition of the Fortune 500, 11 companies are led by CEOs with Indian heritage who oversee enterprises with a combined market cap of more than $6.5 trillion. The transformation behind the joke's punchline was at first gradual, then sudden. Ramani Ayer became the first Indian-born CEO of a Fortune 500 company when he took the helm of The Hartford in 1997. Indra Nooyi's 2006 appointment at PepsiCo marked another milestone as she became the first Indian woman to lead a Fortune 100 company. By 2010, Ajay Banga's appointment at Mastercard established what would become a recognizable pattern. Today, executives like Nooyi and Banga (who transitioned to World Bank president in 2023) are often viewed as dean figures of the Indian CEO community, mentoring subsequent generations. A conceptual image of a businesswoman standing at the top of stairs and looking out over a cityscape skyline. A conceptual image of a businesswoman standing at the top of stairs and looking out over a cityscape skyline. iStockphoto/Getty Previous attempts to explain this phenomenon have relied heavily on cultural anecdotes and personal theories. During a 2022 roundtable discussion on the "Rise of Indian CEOs on the Fortune 500 List" hosted by India's leading business channel CNBC-TV18, prominent Indian executives offered their own perspectives: Piyush Gupta of DBS Bank proposed his "H.A.T." framework—hunger, adaptability and tenacity. Prem Watsa, chairman of Fairfax Financial Holdings, emphasized democratic values and family orientation. Shobana Kamineni, founder and chairperson of Apollo Hospitals, highlighted entrepreneurial drive emerging from health care challenges. Newsweek decided to move beyond speculation. We investigated career trajectories to understand how historical forces have contributed to the success of Indian business leaders. To ground our analysis in data, we partnered with ghSMART, a global leadership consulting firm that has assessed 30,000 CEOs and C-suite executives across industries and geographies as part of its proprietary CEO Genome research, which is used by Fortune 500 companies and private equity firms to select and develop senior leaders. Their data on executives of Indian descent found that they are over five times more likely to take calculated risks, nearly six times more likely to embrace challenges and three times more likely to demonstrate resilience and process orientation, competencies essential for leading through complexity and change. Their scores also disproportionately spike in adapting proactively, one of their core predictors of CEO success. We also conducted extensive interviews with Indian-heritage CEOs, examining how they built careers and navigated global corporate structures. PepsiCo Chair and CEO Indra Nooyi pictured on November 11, 2013, in New Delhi, India. PepsiCo Chair and CEO Indra Nooyi pictured on November 11, 2013, in New Delhi, India. Priyanka Parashar/Mint via Getty What emerged were four distinct patterns of how Indian executives learned to navigate the global economy, tracing India's evolution from a newly independent nation exporting its brightest minds to a global economic power that both shapes international business and increasingly retains its own talent. The first wave proved technical competence could overcome cultural barriers during initial globalization. The second wave leveraged chaos navigation skills when technology disrupted traditional corporate hierarchies. The third wave transcended cultural assumptions through operational excellence as even the most cherished brands realized they needed global management capabilities. The fourth wave increasingly opted for India over the U.S. as institutional capacity matured to support world-class wealth creation. The IIT to Corporate America Pipeline Raj Gupta arrived at Cornell University in 1969 with $8 in his pocket, Vietnam War protests raging across campus and a plan to stay just long enough to get a master's degree in operations research and some American work experience to boost his career prospects back home in India. His father, a civil engineer, had insisted one of his sons become a mechanical engineer, and Gupta had dutifully earned his mechanical engineering degree at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, one of a string of elite educational centers established after Indian independence in 1947. A member of IIT Bombay's sixth graduating class, Gupta was one of the thousands of newly minted English-speaking engineers that India had begun producing annually. Upon first arrival, many of Gupta's immediate concerns were about surviving his first Ithaca winter, but his primary aim was landing a job. While he received multiple offers, including from IBM and Xerox, he opted for Scott Paper, a Philadelphia firm that had cemented its reputation for innovation in 1890 by being the first to put toilet paper on a roll. His reasoning was ruthlessly pragmatic: "Philadelphia was the warmest of all five locations." FedEx President and CEO Raj Subramaniam, left, pictured with Wayfair CEO and co-founder Niraj Shah at a Boston College Chief Executives Club luncheon on March 5, 2025, in Boston, MA. FedEx President and CEO Raj Subramaniam, left, pictured with Wayfair CEO and co-founder Niraj Shah at a Boston College Chief Executives Club luncheon on March 5, 2025, in Boston, MA. Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Gupta's generation had arrived during a unique convergence. The U.S. 1965 Immigration Act opened skilled migration pathways while American corporations desperately needed technical expertise. But corporate America remained overwhelmingly white and male, so Indian professionals still needed to navigate unspoken barriers despite their sought-after skills. India's education system had created this pipeline through relentless competition. As former VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram notes: "You were either an engineer or a doctor or nobody. The education system wasn't built to support all students." The IIT acceptance rate of 0.5-2 percent made them more selective than Ivy League schools, while elite preparatory institutions like Hyderabad Public School created additional advantages. Hyderabad Public School seen on May 29, 2014, in Hyderabad, India. Hyderabad Public School seen on May 29, 2014, in Hyderabad, India. Doreen Fiedler/picture alliance via Getty The HPS connection proved remarkable: alumni include Microsoft's Nadella, Shantanu Narayen of Adobe, Banga of World Bank and Fairfax Financial's Watsa. Nadella's path proved especially intriguing—unable to clear the IIT entrance exam, he attended Manipal Institute of Technology, demonstrating that even those who "failed" India's most competitive tests could achieve global success. In 1971, Gupta joined Rohm and Haas, a multinational chemicals firm, where he spent four decades, accumulating "13 jobs in three continents and 17 bosses." Early feedback revealed colleagues saw him as "easily manipulated" because his careful communication style seemed to lack conviction. This communication challenge isn't uncommon among Indian executives, according to ghSMART's research. Gupta's breakthrough came when a mentor told him: "You have to get the notion of 'white man at the top' out of your head." He learned to speak directly, transforming from someone who avoided conflict to an executive who could drive difficult decisions. In 1999, he became chairman and CEO of Rohm and Haas until Dow acquired the firm for $15 billion in 2009. Even as the business landscape dramatically evolved, this pattern recurred across subsequent generations. Companies and technologies may have changed radically, but the patient, competence-building approach remained consistent. Reliability, the ability to consistently deliver on results, and one of ghSMART's four CEO Genome markers, emerged in their research as a hallmark strength among Indian CEOs. Nearly half of their top strengths aligned with "reliably executing," underscoring a disciplined, execution-oriented leadership style. Students listen as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks at an "India@75" event on October 19, 2022, at IIT Bombay in Mumbai, India. Students listen as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks at an "India@75" event on October 19, 2022, at IIT Bombay in Mumbai, India. Praful Gangurde/Hindustan Times via Getty Take Nadella, who studied electrical engineering at Manipal before joining Microsoft in 1992. He transitioned from engineering server software to architecting Microsoft's cloud-first strategy, driving market value from $300 billion to over $3 trillion, becoming CEO in 2014. Similarly, Pichai studied metallurgy engineering at IIT Kharagpur before joining Google in 2004 as a product manager. He evolved from managing Chrome browser development to leading Alphabet as CEO, overseeing the company's transformation to an AI-first strategy. What's remarkable is that none of these executives stayed in their technical specializations. The willingness to walk away from engineering careers they'd fought so intensely to enter suggests the selection process identified not just technical competence but strategic opportunism—the ability to recognize when greater fortunes lay elsewhere. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella arrives to testify in an antitrust trial at federal court on October 2, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella arrives to testify in an antitrust trial at federal court on October 2, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Drew Angerer/Getty Masters of Chaos While pioneering IIT grads were climbing American corporate ladders in the 1970s and 1980s, that entire world was heading toward upheaval. The gray flannel suit conformity that had defined postwar business began fracturing as technology entrepreneurs moved to center stage. An entirely new leadership style demanded new skills—agility over authority, innovation over institutional knowledge, the ability to navigate constant change. Enter a generation of Indian executives uniquely prepared for corporate chaos. "Growing up in India, I was learning every day because of the chaos and the ambiguity around me," explains Ravi Kumar, CEO of Cognizant. "If you drive a car in India, you can drive in any part of the world." The inherent complexity of India—more than 1.4 billion people, over 1,600 languages and dialects, fragmented bureaucracies, constantly shifting political coalitions—forged executives comfortable with uncertainty just when global business culture began demanding that skill. This stood in sharp contrast to the postwar American corporate experience, which operated within stable, predictable structures. While American executives trained in companies that prized order and process, their Indian counterparts grew up navigating the country's daily chaos. As the older, staid corporate culture began to shatter amidst the digital revolution, Indian executives discovered their supposed disadvantage had become their greatest asset. For Neil Batlivala, CEO of health care company Pair Team, early exposure to this shifting landscape came through his father's philosophy. "You can be second in line forever in India," Batlivala recalls being told. "You can just stay there expecting the system to move for you, but it won't." Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar. Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar. Marleen Moise/Courtesy of Cognizant There's a Hindi word for this adaptive capability: jugaad, often used for coming up with solutions on the fly. But Kumar describes jugaad as something beyond individual problem-solving and much more systemic. "The world around us is dynamically changing," he says. "We have to revalidate assumptions and be flexible enough to do so—but also have the discipline to put guardrails around that flexibility." Growing up in India, Batlivala's mother regularly took him to visit children living under a bridge in the slums. "One day, the little boy wasn't there. His sister said, 'Oh, he got hit by a car and died.' That's my why I'm in health care." Rather than study medicine, Batlivala created an entirely new category of AI-enabled health care services for underserved populations. "A lot of it goes back to jugaad. The practicality in all of it: If I need a place to sit, I'm going to sit on a tire. That's it. I don't need to overthink it." This adaptability stood out in ghSMART's research: Indian executives were nearly six times more likely than others to demonstrate strength in "embracing challenges" and showed a 43 percent higher strength-to-risk ratio in adaptability. "I tend to think in shades of gray naturally. It's the nature of where I grew up," notes Raghuram. "Change is what it is in India." A modern Bombardier tramway bearing a Zoho advertisement on July 30, 2024, in Toronto, Canada. A modern Bombardier tramway bearing a Zoho advertisement on July 30, 2024, in Toronto, Canada. Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty These skills stood out in the ghSMART data. In the area of "deciding with speed and conviction," one of the four CEO Genome markers, Indian leaders had a 15 percent higher strength-to-risk ratio compared to the control, indicating a distinct pattern of calculated risk-taking. Indian CEOs also stood out for their ability to make deliberate, high-conviction decisions. Raghuram's career exemplified this adaptability. After earning his physics degree from IIT Bombay and an MBA from Wharton, he joined Netscape in 1996 as a product manager just as the internet was exploding. When Netscape was acquired, he moved to VMware, spending over two decades building the company's product portfolio before becoming CEO in 2021. His technical background combined with business acumen enabled him to guide VMware through its $61 billion acquisition by Broadcom two years later. The 1990s tech boom shattered older career paths. When Netscape's IPO in August 1995 created instant millionaires, earlier Indian leaders like Raj Gupta were still methodically advancing through structured hierarchies, while entrepreneurs like Jay Chaudhry were building cybersecurity companies. Chaudhry's path from air force engineer in India to founder of multiple Silicon Valley security companies—including Zscaler, worth $45 billion—exemplified how the tech boom rewarded risk-taking over institutional loyalty. After selling his first three companies for hundreds of millions, his willingness to keep founding startups rather than settling into corporate roles became a hallmark of this entrepreneurial generation. Starbucks' flagship store in Mumbai, India. Starbucks' flagship store in Mumbai, India. Business Wire This blend of adaptability with disciplined execution appears repeatedly in ghSMART's data, where Indian executives demonstrate unusual success transitioning from technical roles to strategic leadership. The disruptions created the perfect environment for executives trained in uncomfortable zones. While traditional American CEOs struggled with accelerating change cycles, many Indian executives had already spent their formative years navigating constant change. Their success wasn't despite India's chaos—it was because they had learned to thrive within it. As global business became increasingly complex and networked, companies began recognizing that skills forged in India's fragmented landscape translated directly into competitive advantages for managing modern enterprises. Cross-Cultural Management Skills When Coco Chanel opened her millinery shop in Paris in 1910, when Fred Smith described his overnight delivery concept in an undergrad economics paper at Yale in 1965 or when Howard Schultz launched a coffee shop in Seattle in 1971, none could have imagined the global enterprises their ideas would spawn. Yet by the time Indian CEOs took the reins of these brands—Chanel, FedEx and Starbucks—their success required navigating organizations that had exploded far beyond their founders' visions. When Narasimhan took over as Starbucks CEO in 2023, he inherited a global empire requiring systematic operational management across vastly different cultural contexts. Leena Nair became Chanel's first Indian CEO in January 2022 after three decades climbing through Unilever's human resources organization. Her appointment shattered assumptions about who could lead brands where cultural mystique seemed paramount. "If somebody told me I would have the chance to do what I'm doing today, I would not have believed them," Nair told The Wall Street Journal shortly after taking the job. While she said her previous role had been "about mass, mass, mass—get it out there. This is about rarity, precious, fewer. It's a completely different world." Imran Amed and Leena Nair, right, speak onstage at a #BoFVOICES event at Soho Farmhouse on November 28, 2023, in Chipping Norton, England. Imran Amed and Leena Nair, right, speak onstage at a #BoFVOICES event at Soho Farmhouse on November 28, 2023, in Chipping Norton, England. Samir Hussein/Getty for BoF Raj Subramaniam succeeded Smith as only the second CEO in FedEx's 53-year history after spending three decades mastering the operational complexity Smith had created. Nooyi transformed PepsiCo during her tenure as CEO from 2006 to 2018, building her "Performance with Purpose" strategy through systematic stakeholder engagement rather than marketing intuition, increasing annual profits from $2.7 billion to $6.5 billion. Neal Mohan followed similar patterns to become YouTube CEO in 2023, inheriting responsibility for managing content policies across global markets where cultural missteps trigger international incidents. Born in Indiana, he moved to India with his family at age 12. He studied electrical engineering at Stanford, worked for the consulting giant Accenture, switched to the tech field and eventually ended up at the online advertising giant DoubleClick before it was acquired by Google. Mohan's path through Google's product management ranks, developing advertising technologies and scaling digital platforms before taking the reins at YouTube, provided more relevant preparation than traditional media industry experience. This generation of Indian executives faced a particular challenge in consumer-facing roles: translating their systematic, analytical approach into the kind of compelling narratives that Western business culture would value. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan (center) with influencers Julian Shapiro Barnum (left) and Haley Kalil at YouTube Brandcast 2025 on May 14, 2025, at David Geffen Hall in New York City. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan (center) with influencers Julian Shapiro Barnum (left) and Haley Kalil at YouTube Brandcast 2025 on May 14, 2025, at David Geffen Hall in New York City. Noam Galai/Getty for YouTube "People like Shantanu [Narayen] and Satya [Nadella] have overcome this," notes Raghuram. "In the human race, the only time you're able to get a large group of people to do something is to tell a story. It's an acquired skill and not a skill taught in schools." Instead, they excelled through taking "extra cycles trying to build and get people to come along with you." This patient coalition-building may have lacked theatrical flair, but it proved more effective for navigating global brands' complex stakeholder environments. This leadership style reflects not just personal preference but historical necessity. ghSMART found Indian CEOs are 1.4 times more likely than their peers to excel at customer orientation, applying systematic analysis to understanding consumer needs rather than relying on instincts and tastes that can only be acquired by being seeped inside a cultural enclave. Companies needed executives who could balance competing interests of boards, employees, customers, communities and shareholders simultaneously. The 2019 Business Roundtable statement abandoning shareholder primacy for stakeholder capitalism formalized what successful executives had already recognized: The days when charismatic founders could mandate cultural transformation through executive decree had ended. Kumar describes this approach through his experience at Cognizant: "I have a strong belief that growth lies in heterogeneity. Surround yourself with people who are not like you and figure out a way to work with people you disagree with." Similarly, BK Kalra, CEO of enterprise technologies firm Genpact, who built software teams across cultural boundaries, emphasizes building trust gradually: "My personal brand and ethos were around being authentic with clients and having trustworthy relationships with them." These capabilities proved more valuable than cultural insider knowledge as brands globalized. Managing Chanel's expansion into Asian markets, navigating FedEx's regulatory challenges across multiple continents or scaling YouTube's content policies while maintaining brand consistency demanded the kind of cross-cultural management skills that Indian executives had developed growing up managing what Piyush Gupta describes as "multiple different kinds of people, different languages, different religions, different ethnicities." Raj Subramaniam, center, rings the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on April 17, 2023, in New York. Raj Subramaniam, center, rings the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on April 17, 2023, in New York. Seth Wenig/AP But even as this generation demonstrated they could lead traditional Western brands through globalization, a different phenomenon was emerging. A new cohort was rejecting Western corporate structures entirely, choosing to build wealth within India as the country transformed into an elite destination. Gravity's Pull to India Consider two IIT graduates in 1995, both ranked at the top of their computer science classes as the dot-com boom was just beginning. One accepts a software engineering position at Netscape in Silicon Valley, arriving just as Marc Andreessen's web browser company prepares to go public and transform internet commerce forever. The other takes a promising role at Infosys in Bangalore, joining the growing ranks of Indian engineers building enterprise software and preparing for the looming Y2K crisis. Who would you bet has a greater net worth today? In 1995, the answer seemed obvious. The Netscape engineer would surf successive technology waves, accumulating equity stakes that India couldn't match. The Infosys engineer would build a solid IT services career but nothing approaching Silicon Valley's wealth creation potential. After India's economic liberalization in 1991, when the weight of the staggering rules, permits and licenses needed to do almost anything in India—what was called the "License Raj"—was lifted, everything changed. The country's venture capital ecosystem grew from nearly nothing in 2000 to $38.5 billion by 2021. Mumbai's stock exchanges began competing with NASDAQ for wealth creation opportunities. Sridhar Vembu exemplified this transformation. After earning his electrical engineering Ph.D. from Princeton in 1994, he received lucrative Wall Street and Silicon Valley offers but instead returned to India to build Zoho Corporation. Working from a rural Tamil Nadu village, the "barefoot billionaire" now runs a global SaaS empire worth $5.85 billion. But he isn't the only one. Similarly, the Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal left Amazon's Seattle offices in 2007 with about $10,000 in savings to build India's e-commerce giant, which they sold to Walmart for $16 billion in 2018. Razorpay founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, Y Combinator alumni and IIT Roorkee graduates, tackled India's fragmented payment infrastructure and achieved net worths exceeding $1 billion each by age 33. Workers carry packages in an inventory storage area at the Flipkart fulfilment centre on September 10, 2024, in Malur on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India. Workers carry packages in an inventory storage area at the Flipkart fulfilment centre on September 10, 2024, in Malur on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India. IDREES MOHAMMED/AFP via Getty All these billionaires share key characteristics: unquestionable global mobility through elite credentials, insight to identify uniquely Indian problems as billion-dollar opportunities; and timing to ride India's post-2000 acceleration. They created business models adapted to Indian realities—Flipkart's cash-on-delivery, Razorpay's complex banking navigation—requiring deep cultural knowledge unavailable through Stanford case studies. Established Influence When Raj Gupta started at Cornell in the '60s, Indian executives leading major American corporations seemed impossible. By 2022's CNBC-TV18 roundtable marking 75 years of Indian independence, Watsa could confidently declare: "India, the next 10 years are going to be dramatic. It is the best place to invest." This trajectory from exclusion to influence, captured in these four waves, reflects not cultural programming but strategic navigation of evolving global opportunities. But this extraordinary seedbed of talent may not last forever. China produces more engineers annually than India, while automation threatens traditional technical roles. Yet that concern may be unfounded. Indian executives demonstrate unusual success transitioning from technical to strategic leadership—a capability that becomes even more valuable as corporations require both technological sophistication and stakeholder management expertise. Garcetti's diplomatic jest about CEO appointments becoming exclusively Indian overstates the phenomenon, but his underlying observation holds: "People have come and made a big difference." The collective impact of Indian executives extends beyond individual success stories to fundamental transformation of corporate leadership itself. They demonstrated that operational excellence transcends cultural assumptions, that coalition-building creates more sustainable organizations than charismatic authority and that patient capital allocation often outperforms quarterly optimization. And as Vembu's choice of rural Tamil Nadu over Silicon Valley suggests, the next chapter may reverse traditional mobility patterns entirely. The question facing the fifth wave isn't whether Indian executives can lead global corporations—that's settled. Instead, it's whether the specific historical conditions that created this phenomenon can be replicated elsewhere, and whether India can maintain its talent pipeline while other countries develop competitive educational and institutional advantages.
Nikkei Asia
3 days ago
- Business
- Nikkei Asia
IMF No. 2 Gita Gopinath heads back to Harvard professorship
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Gita Gopinath, the No. 2 official at the International Monetary Fund, will leave her post at the end of August to return to Harvard University, the IMF said in a statement on Monday. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva will name a successor to Gopinath in "due course," the IMF said. Gopinath joined the fund in 2019 as chief economist -- the first woman to serve in that role -- and was promoted to first deputy managing director in January 2022. No comment was immediately available from the U.S. Treasury, which manages the dominant U.S. shareholding in the IMF. While European countries have traditionally chosen the fund's managing director, the U.S. Treasury has traditionally recommended candidates for the first deputy managing director role. Gopinath is an Indian-born U.S. citizen. The timing of the move caught some IMF insiders by surprise, and appears to have been initiated by Gopinath. Gopinath, who had left Harvard to join the IMF, will return to the university as a professor of economics. Gopinath's departure will offer Treasury a chance to recommend a successor at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to restructure the global economy and end long-standing U.S. trade deficits with high tariffs on imports from nearly all countries. She will return to a university that has been in the Trump administration's crosshairs after it rejected demands to change its governance, hiring and admissions practices. Georgieva said Gopinath joined the IMF as a highly respected academic and proved to be an "exceptional intellectual leader" during her time, which included the pandemic and global shocks caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Gita steered the Fund's analytical and policy work with clarity, striving for the highest standards of rigorous analysis at a complex time of high uncertainty and rapidly changing global economic environment," Georgieva said. Gopinath has also overseen the fund's multilateral surveillance and analytical work on fiscal and monetary policy, debt and international trade. Gopinath said she was grateful for a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to work at the IMF, thanking both Georgieva and the previous IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, who appointed her as chief economist. "I now return to my roots in academia, where I look forward to continuing to push the research frontier in international finance and macroeconomics to address global challenges, and to training the next generation of economists," she said in a statement.
The Hindu
3 days ago
- Business
- The Hindu
Gita Gopinath leaving IMF in August to return to Harvard
Gita Gopinath, the No. 2 official at the International Monetary Fund, will leave her post at the end of August to return to Harvard University, the IMF said in a statement on Monday (July 21, 2025). IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva will name a successor to Ms. Gopinath in "due course," the IMF said. Ms. Gopinath joined the fund in 2019 as chief economist — the first woman to serve in that role — and was promoted to first deputy managing director in January 2022. No comment was immediately available from the U.S. Treasury, which manages the dominant U.S. shareholding in the IMF. While European countries have traditionally chosen the Fund's managing director, the U.S. Treasury has traditionally recommended candidates for the first deputy managing director role. Ms. Gopinath is an Indian-born U.S. citizen. The timing of the move caught some IMF insiders by surprise and appears to have been initiated by Ms. Gopinath. Ms. Gopinath, who had left Harvard to join the IMF, will return to the university as a professor of economics. Ms. Gopinath's departure will offer Treasury a chance to recommend a successor at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to restructure the global economy and end longstanding U.S. trade deficits with high tariffs on imports from nearly all countries. She will return to a university that has been in the Trump administration's crosshairs after it rejected demands to change its governance, hiring, and admissions practices. Ms. Georgieva said Ms. Gopinath joined the IMF as a highly respected academic and proved to be an "exceptional intellectual leader" during her time, which included the pandemic and global shocks caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Gita steered the Fund's analytical and policy work with clarity, striving for the highest standards of rigorous analysis at a complex time of high uncertainty and rapidly changing global economic environment," Ms. Georgieva said. Ms. Gopinath has also overseen the fund's multilateral surveillance and analytical work on fiscal and monetary policy, debt, and international trade. Ms. Gopinath said she was grateful for a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to work at the IMF, thanking both Ms. Georgieva and the previous IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, who appointed her as chief economist. "I now return to my roots in academia, where I look forward to continuing to push the research frontier in international finance and macroeconomics to address global challenges, and to training the next generation of economists," she said in a statement.
News18
3 days ago
- Business
- News18
Gita Gopinath To Exit IMF In August, Return To Harvard University As Economics Professor
Gopinath joined the fund in 2019 as chief economist – the first woman to serve in that role – and was promoted to first deputy managing director in January 2022. No comment was immediately available from the U.S. Treasury, which manages the dominant U.S. shareholding in the IMF. While European countries have traditionally chosen the Fund's managing director, the U.S. Treasury has traditionally recommended candidates for the first deputy managing director role. Gopinath is an Indian-born U.S. citizen. The timing of the move caught some IMF insiders by surprise, and appears to have been initiated by Gopinath. Gopinath, who had left Harvard to join the IMF, will return to the university as a professor of economics. Gopinath's departure will offer Treasury a chance to recommend a successor at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to restructure the global economy and end longstanding U.S. trade deficits with high tariffs on imports from nearly all countries. She will return to a university that has been in the Trump administration's crosshairs after it rejected demands to change its governance, hiring, and admissions practices. Georgieva said Gopinath joined the IMF as a highly respected academic and proved to be an 'exceptional intellectual leader" during her time, which included the pandemic and global shocks caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 'Gita steered the Fund's analytical and policy work with clarity, striving for the highest standards of rigorous analysis at a complex time of high uncertainty and rapidly changing global economic environment," Georgieva said. Gopinath has also overseen the fund's multilateral surveillance and analytical work on fiscal and monetary policy, debt, and international trade.
