Laxman Narasimhan is the latest Indian-origin CEO to lead a significant worldwide multinational corporation, following in the footsteps of Parag Agrawal at Twitter, Sundar Pichai at Google, Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Shantanu Narayan at Adobe, Arvind Krishna at IBM, and Raghu Raghuram at VMW, among others. Narasimhan, 55, who formerly served as CEO of Reckitt Benckiser, will travel from London to Seattle in October to become the incoming CEO of Starbucks. Narasimhan grew up in Pune, India, and earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the College of Engineering, Pune, an MA in German and International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania’s Lauder Institute, and an MBA in finance from the Wharton School.
According to Pallavi Kathuria, partner at executive search company Egon Zehnder India, such circumstances involve at least three components. Most Indian-origin leaders grew up in India, where resources of all kinds, from university seats to jobs and chances at large, contributed to their being not just fiercely competitive, but also with a strong sense of inventiveness in being able to get the job done with less-than-ideal resources.
The second is that “India’s difficulties, problems, and unique set of eccentricities require any leader from the subcontinent to build a winning proportionate balance of IQ and EQ, which is exceptional,” she adds. According to her, this type of management repertoire not only allows a leader to communicate with board members, customers, shareholders, partners, and employees, but also to think logically about strategy, market tactics, balance-sheet-driven operations, and product and service design.
Kathuria adds that it is important to remember that most Indian-origin CEOs at the highest levels have global experience and are not afraid to travel and work across cultures and markets with their families, making their potential all the more valuable to prospective corporations that are themselves global. Starbucks, for example, is fast expanding as a worldwide supplier of coffee and food, not only in India but also in other markets, and in the long run, the majority of its revenue will most likely come from markets other than the United States. Since its inception in cooperation with the Tata Group a decade ago, Starbucks has opened around 280 locations in India across 30 cities