Companies like Microsoft, Google, Adobe, Pepsi, MasterCard, and Harmon have all in common the fact that they are run by CEOs born in India. They are part of a generation of talented students who rose to the top of the world's largest corporations after their left their home country.
Google's new CEO, Sundar Pichai, is the latest young manager to enjoy a fulminant rise. After working only for 11 years with Google, he ran the company's Android division, succeed to turn Chrome into the world's most popular Web browser, and most recently served as product chief.
Pichai is not an exception. He's path to CEO mirrors what other India-born are professional succeeded to accomplish. Most of them studied at India's best management and technology schools, yet they are mostly coming from modest backgrounds. The vast majority of them also completed graduate degrees in the United States.
Pichai, for example, was born to a stenographer and an electrical engineer in the southern Indian city of Chennai. His family shared just a modest two-room apartment. According to a profile published by Bloomberg last year, Sundar and his younger brother had to sleep in the living room. Until he was aged 12, his family didn't even get their first telephone.
But Pichai was driven by a real passion for technology. He went to study engineering at one of the best schools in the country, the Indian Institute of Technology. He won there a scholarship to Stanford.
A few others had similar career ascendant trajectories. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi, have been drawn to the U.S. after they completed their educations in India. They knew where the place is to get prized as a talented manager or engineer. Especially for those technically talented, the American Silicon Valley was a strong center of attraction.
The rise of these young India-born CEOs speaks about meritocracy in the United States, according to Som Mittal, a former president of India's main software trade body, Nasscom. These young brilliant and bright Indian professionals knew how to work their way up on the American corporate ladder.
