India celebrated the 18th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention (PBD), 2025, on January 9 in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha, and celebrated India's outstanding contribution to world development. PBD is a noteworthy occasion that celebrates the contributions made by the Indian diaspora to their native country. Some of the biggest companies in the world are led by Indian CEOs and business leaders, with a significant concentration in the technology industry. Most of these Indian business tycoons have roots in India. Let’s learn more about the roots of Indian business leaders who migrated to the US.

Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, started as a product manager in his early forties and rose through the ranks to become the head of one of the biggest and most influential internet businesses ever. A strategically important component of Google's search operation was exposed, making it the primary force behind some of the most significant items produced by the tech giant.

The tech leader frequently highlights India's development on the international scene. Google CEO Sundar Pichai commended Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dedication to spearheading India's digital revolution during their discussion at a high-profile roundtable with executives of the IT sector recently.

"The PM has been focussed on transforming India. It is Digital India's vision. He pushed us to continue making in India, designing in India. We are proud to now make our Pixel phones manufactured in India." says  Sundar.

If we look into his educational background,  Sundar went to Stanford University to obtain a Master's degree in material sciences and engineering after completing his undergraduate studies in metallurgical engineering in his home country of India. Before receiving his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, he worked as an engineer and product manager at Applied Materials, abandoning his aspirations to pursue a PhD. A position as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company came next. After that, he joined Google in 2004, and eleven years later, as part of the company's Alphabet reorganization, he was appointed CEO.

Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella serves as both chairman and CEO of Microsoft. Before being appointed CEO in February 2014, Nadella served in executive positions in the company's consumer and enterprise divisions. After joining Microsoft in 1992, he immediately established himself as a leader capable of transforming some of the company's largest product offerings by spanning a variety of industries and technology.

The last position Satya held was executive vice president of Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise division. He was in charge of the company's move to cloud services and infrastructure, which helped it beat competitors in market share and outperform the competition. Previously, Nadella oversaw RandD for the Online Services Division and served as vice president of the Microsoft Business Division. Nadella was employed at Sun Microsystems as a tech staff member before joining Microsoft. Satya currently lives in Bellevue, Washington, with his family. He was born in Hyderabad, India. 

He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Mangalore University, his Master's degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and his Master's degree in business administration from the University of Chicago.

Satya Nadella visited India on February 7, 2024, by restating the company's commitment to assisting India in becoming an AI-first nation. Building a workforce with the requisite skills and empowering all sectors and industries to use AI to transform the pledge helps India achieve its goal of self-sufficiency. When Satya spoke at the Microsoft CEO Connection event in Mumbai top business executives and decision-makers were in attendance. By 2025, two million Indians will have access to AI skilling opportunities through Microsoft's new Advantage India program. This would increase India's ability to thrive in the AI era and help close the skills gap across the nation.

“India is uniquely positioned to make the promise of AI a reality. We are committed to partnering broadly across the public and private sectors to help close the nation’s AI skills gap and create new opportunities throughout the country,”  says Satya.

 

Reshma Kewalramani

Reshma Kewalramani is the CEO and president of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, joining the biopharmaceutical sector, where Reshma devoted her career to finding and creating new medications.  Dr. Reshma has received training in internal medicine and nephrology. She joined the company in 2017 as Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Global Medicines Development and Medical Affairs and became CEO of Vertex in 2020.

Born and raised in Bombay, India, Reshma’s adventure started there. At the age of eleven, she and her family made the decision to relocate to the United States, which marked a sea change in her life. Her amazing journey to break barriers and establish new standards in the biotechnology industry began with her cross-continental move. 

Jay Chaudhry

Jay is a successful businessman who built several firms, such as AirDefense, CipherTrust, CoreHarbor, SecureIT, and Zscaler, which went public on March 16, 2018.  At Zscaler, a global security cloud for distributed and mobile organizations, Jay has a history of bringing innovative products to the market that meet the need for safely enabling new technological developments. Jay is a valued advisor to many enterprise CIOs and CISOs due to his extensive work in the security technology field.

Jay draws on his more than 25 years of experience in the security sector, which includes management, sales, marketing, and engineering work with top companies like Unisys, IBM, and NCR.

Jay’s path from a Himachal Pradesh village to building the $10 billion cybersecurity behemoth Zscaler is a testament to perseverance and hard work. He came to the U.S. in 1980 after graduating from IIT, where he excelled in technology and entrepreneurship to revolutionize cloud security.

Before starting Zscaler in 2008, he established and oversaw AirDefense, a pioneer in wireless security, until Motorola purchased it. Before its merger with Secure Computing, Jay founded and oversaw CipherTrust, the first email security gateway in the business, from 2000 until 2006. Before its acquisition by USi/AT&T, he also founded and oversaw CoreHarbor, a managed e-commerce system. Before its 1998 acquisition by VeriSign, Jay founded and oversaw SecureIT, the first pure-play internet security firm, in 1996.

Srikant Datar

As the dean of Harvard Business School, Srikant Datar is an Indian-American economist. In addition, he holds the Harvard Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professorship in Business Administration. The Padma Shri India's fourth-highest civilian honor was given to him in 2021. He has been the faculty chair of Harvard Innovation Labs and the Senior Associate Dean for University Affairs at Harvard Business School since 2015.

Based out of the United States, he serves on the boards of directors of T-Mobile US Stryker Corporation and IIM Calcutta. He previously held positions on the boards of IIM Ahmedabad as well as the Indian companies HCL Technologies (2012–2014) and KPIT Technologies (2007–2012). 

In addition to working as an accountant and planner in the corporate world, Srikant has lectured at Harvard, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon universities. His areas of research interest include time-based competition incentives, performance evaluation, cost control, productivity assessment, innovation, and new product development.

He has also written numerous publications and won numerous honors and academic prizes. Additionally, Srikant has advised many businesses on research training and development.