GLOBAL INDIAN ACHIEVERS

Indra Nooyi, the chairman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo, received a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Madras Christian College and went to Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta to pursue her MBA. An alumnus of Yale School of Management, she became the 5th CEO of PepsiCo in the year 2006. A resident of Connecticut, Indra was named in the Time’s list of most influential people in the World for the year 2007.

LN Mittal, born and brought up in Sadalpur in north-west Rajasthan, broke away from his father’s Calcutta-based steel business and built his own firm, buying steel plants from Algeria to Kazakhstan to Ukraine to the US. Mittal, the biggest steel tycoon in the world now lives in London. He owns a 12-bedroom mansion at Kensington Palace gardens.

The latest to join the list of Indian global CEOs is Vikram Pandit. A native of Nagpur, Pandit completed his engineering and PhD from the Columbia University. Pandit was appointed the CEO of the world’s largest bank - Citigroup in December 2007.

Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, was born on October 21, 1954, in Pachmarhi, Madhya Pradesh, India. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur with a B.Tech Degree in Metallurgical Engineering in 1975. In 1978 he gained a MS in Engineering and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the Berkeley. Today, he is the CEO of the world's biggest mobile phone company (by revenue), Britain's Vodafone Group. He has United States citizenship, and is presently based in the United Kingdom.
Indian American Shantanu Narayen is the CEO of Adobe; Narayen holds five patents and is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events. He serves on the Board of Metavante Technologies, Inc. and the Advisory Board of the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. Narayen holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from Osmania University in India, a master’s degree in computer science from Bowling Green State University and a master’s degree in business administration from the Haas School of Business.
Vinod Khosla, the founder of Sun Microsystems, was born on January 28, 1955 in Pune, India. He is an influential personality in Silicon Valley. He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986.

Indians have done wonders in the field of arts and entertainment too.
M. Night Shyamalan or to be precise, Manoj Nelliattu Shyamalan was born in Pondicherry, India before moving to the United States. A critically acclaimed director in Hollywood, Shyamalan gave us the Oscar-winning Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and other cinematic masterpieces.

Zubin Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Mumbai. Son of Mehli and Tehmina Mehta, he is one of the greatest orchestra conductors in the world.

Deepak Chopra’s books have been a revelation in spirituality and mind-body medicine.

Also, there is Raj Patel, the next-door neighbour of Archie Andrews who has been spreading the Indian culture in Riverdale.

Bhairavi Desai, the founding member of the Taxi Workers Alliance in New York works for the betterment of the taxi drivers in the city who are primarily from an Asian background.

Amrit Singh is the daughter of the Indian Prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. An alumnus of Yale, Oxford and Cambridge, she has been working with the American Civil Liberties Union. She co-authored the book ‘Administration of Torture’ with Jameel Jaffer. It is the most detailed account of what took place in America's overseas detention centers. It features the atrocities committed to the prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

Vinita Gupta, an Indian American, took up the case of immigrants exploited by a factory owner in Oklahoma City.

Upendra J Chivukula, first Asian American elected to the New Jersey General Assembly was born in Nellore, India.

In science and technology, Indians have perhaps excelled the most, forming a bulk of the research teams in Silicon Valley, NASA and almost every other place under the sun.

Subramaniam Chandrasekhar - Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1983 and Har Gobind Khorana - Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, 1968 were both American Indians.

Amit Singal, George Sudarshan are just a few of the thousands of Indian scientists who are involved in research in the US.

In sports almost every cricket team in the world, people of Indian origin seem to be present in abundance.

Monty Panesar, Vikram Solanki, Nasser Hussain are cricketers who have played at the international level for their countries. It’s not just about cricket.

Mohini Bharadwaj, who has an Indian father, won medals at the Olympics for Gymnastics.

Dalip Singh Rana the Great Khali, has embarked on a successful professional wrestling career in WWE. But before Khali took to weightlifting and wrestling, he was a mediocre officer with the Punjab State Police and had also won the coveted Mr. India title in 1995 and 1996.

The list of Indian achievers on the global front is a never-ending one and could go on for pages.