There’s never been a better time to be prouder of one’s South Indian heritage than the present with a significant number of individuals with some sort of South Indian origin, making massive strides on a global scale. Here are five who we are particularly proud of…
Sundar Pichai – CEO of Google
Forty-four-year-old Pichai Sundararajan is originally from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. Pichai’s current role was announced on 10 August 2015, as part of the restructuring process that made Alphabet Inc. into Google’s parent company, and he assumed the position on 2 October 2015. Google apparently pays Sundar a very generous salary of $50 million. That’s over R715million per annum.
Indra Nooyi – CEO of PepsiCo Incorporated
Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi is an India-born, naturalized American, business executive and the current Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo, the second largest food and beverage business in the world by net revenue. While CEO of Pepsi Co in 2011, Nooyi earned a total compensation of $17 million which included a base salary of $1.6 million, a cash bonus of $2.5 million, pension value and deferred compensation of $3 million. By 2014, her total compensation had grown to $19,087,832, including $5.5 million of equity compensation.
Arogyaswami Paulraj – wireless researcher, winner of Marconi Prize
Arogyaswami J. Paulraj AVSM, VSM is a distinguished Indian-American electrical engineer. A former Commodore in the Indian Navy, he is currently a Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Elect. Engineering at Stanford University. He is 72 years old.
Professor Sivalingam Sivananthan is an American academic, scientist, businessman and Director of the Microphysics Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Sivananthan is also founder and CEO of Sivananthan Laboratories Inc. based in Bolingbrook, Illinois. In May 2013 Sivananthan was awarded the “Champion of Change” (Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Innovators category) by the White House.
Kalanithi Maran – founder and head of Sun TV Network, owner of SpiceJet Airline and owner of Sunrisers Hyderabad IPL Team
Maran is an Indian media baron who is the chairman and managing director of Sun Group. He owns television channels, newspapers, weeklies, FM radio stations, DTH services and a movie production house. He also held a major share in the Indian airline Spice Jet from 2010 to 2015.