Nikesh Arora | Who is Nikesh Arora? Zuckerberg, who became the world's second highest paid CEO, overtook Sundar Pichai

Leaders Online Desk: Indian origin Nikesh Arora has become the second highest paid CEO. Nikesh Arora is the CEO of Palo Alto Networks. The Wall Street Journalrecently released its list of the highest paid CEOs in America for 2023. Notably, Nikesh Arora, who is of Indian origin, has bagged the second position in the list with an estimated gross earnings of Rs 1,260 crore ($151.43 million). Broadcom's Hock Tan topped the list with $162 million in revenue.

More salary than Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai

Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora topped the list, beating tech giants like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (203 crore) and Google chief Sundar Pichai (around 73 crore).

Shantanu Narayan at 11th position

17 people of Indian origin have made it to the top 500. Adobe's Shantanu Narayan is ranked 11th with $44.93 million. Sanjay Malhotra (Micron Technology), Ajay Gopal (Ansys), and Reshma Kevalramani (Vertex Pharmaceuticals) are in the top 120.

Who is Nikesh Arora?

1. Nikesh Arora was born on February 9, 1968 in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. His father was serving in the Indian Air Force. Nikesh Arora is an alumnus of Air Force Public School, Delhi. He studied at the Air Force School (Subroto Park) before graduating in 1989 in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi. After a brief stint with Wipro, he moved to the US to pursue an MBA at Boston Northeastern University in Massachusetts.
2. In 1992, he started his career at Fidelity Investments. There he held responsibility as finance and technology management. He became Vice President of Fidelity Technologies. In 2000, he founded Doutsche Telekom's subsidiary T-Motion, which later became part of T-Mobile's core services. He also served as Chief Marketing Officer of Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile International Division.
3. He also served as the Chief Business Officer of Google. Arora became the highest paid executive at Google in 2012 when the company hired him with a $51 million package. He left Google in 2014.
4. Arora then joined Japan's SoftBank Corp in 2014. He became Group Vice President and CEO of SoftBank Internet and Media Inc. He surprised everyone by resigning from his position at SoftBank in June 2016. He left SoftBank's top post with compensation, considered a record package for Japan. Since 2018, he has been working at Palo Alto Networks, a cyber security firm.

The chiefs of America's biggest companies reached new pay heights in 2023 as stock awards swelled the value of compensation packages https://t.co/WfIF7yBmIo https://t.co/WfIF7yBmIo

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 21, 2024