The salary of Nikesh Arora, an alumnus of Delhi’s Air Force Public School, has become Rs 12608871950.50. Nikesh is second in the world to receive such a salary package. Indian-origin Nikesh Arora ranked second in The Wall Street Journal’s list of the highest-paid CEOs in America for 2023. Arora’s total compensation reached $151.43 million (Rs 12608871950.50). His stock options have a big contribution in this. Arora is the CEO of Palo Alto Networks.
The Wall Street Journal report highlights the strong presence of Indian-origin executives among high-income earners. 17 people of Indian origin have made it to the top 500. It also includes Shantanu Narayan of Adobe, who is at number 11.
Nikesh Arora’s journey
He rose to prominence during his tenure as Chief Business Officer of Google. After leaving Google in 2014, he made headlines by leading SoftBank in Japan with a record-breaking compensation package. Since 2018, he has been heading Palo Alto Networks, a cyber security firm.
Narayan, who was born and brought up in India, earned $44.93 million by opting for company shares in his salary package. Interestingly, like Narayan, tech giants like Tesla’s Elon Musk and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai (born in India) opted for non-traditional compensation structures in 2023. Musk did not receive any compensation. Sundar Pichai did not earn much, but earned only 8.80 million dollars. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg lost $24.40 million.
who is on number one
Broadcom’s Hock Tan is at first place in this list with earnings of $162 million. Many other Indian-American CEOs also made their place in this list. Sanjay Malhotra (Micron Technology), Ajay Gopal (Ensys) and Reshma Kewalramani (Vertex Pharmaceuticals) were ranked in the top-120. The report also highlighted the achievements of Arvind Krishna (IBM), Badrinarayanan, Kothandaraman (Enphase Energy), Sanjeev Lamba (Linde).
