The world’s best firms have Indian CEOs – but why not in Asia?

Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Photo credit: Pix Spark.

Indians run some of the world’s biggest and best companies –

• Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google
• Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
• Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe
• Francisco D’Souza, CEO of Cognizant
• Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia
• Sanjay Kumar Jha, CEO of Globalfoundries
• Dinesh Paliwal, chairman and CEO of Harman International
• George Kurien, CEO of NetApp
• Indra Nooyi, chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo
• Ajay Banga, president and CEO of MasterCard
• Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS Group
• Ivan Manuel Menezes, CEO of Diageo
• Rakesh Kapoor, CEO of Reckitt Benckiser

The list is long, but what’s equally striking is that only one of those companies – DBS of Singapore – is outside America or Europe.

Nikesh Arora would have become another exception if he had taken over as chairman and CEO of Japanese telecom giant SoftBank as planned. But that didn’t happen as Masayoshi Son changed his mind about handing over the reins and decided to continue to run SoftBank, prompting Nikesh to quit last week.

A Harvard Business Review study shows that Japan and China are among the most insular countries in the world in having foreign CEOs for their large companies. That is why last year’s announcement of Nikesh Arora as the successor of Masayoshi Son marked a huge cultural shift. But now it’s back to business as usual with the appointment of SoftBank oldtimer Ken Miyauchi as COO in place of Nikesh.

Why India only exports CEOs

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Photo credit: Wikimedia.

Ironically, India’s large companies have been equally reluctant to appoint foreign professionals as CEOs, while so many Indians go out and head the top companies in the US. IT services bellwether Infosys struck new ground in 2014 after being run by one founder after another from 1981. It’s CEO now is Vishal Sikka, former CTO of SAP, who is an American and not an Infy insider. Still, he’s Indian by origin.

One exception to this was British-born Karl Slym, former top exec of GM who ran Tata Motors, a Fortune Global 500 company. This ended tragically when he jumped from a Bangkok hotel window after a row with his wife.

When Ratan Tata relinquished charge of the Tata Group after over two decades as its chairman, there was much speculation that his replacement could be a foreign professional. But in the end the it was Cyrus Mistry, part of the extended Tata family, after many rounds of discussion in a succession committee.

India’s unicorns are all run by founders

Photo credit: Pixabay.

More recently, India’s tech startup unicorns have been importing top professionals from Google and other global companies to senior positions. But none at the CEO level. What’s more, several of the appointments have been short-lived due to a possible cultural mismatch, even though these imports from the US are of Indian origin.

A culture of meritocracy