The latest entry into the Indian-origin CEOs club is Parag Agrawal, who on Monday became the newly-appointed CEO of Twitter, after Jack Dorsey announced his resignation. The outgoing CEO will now concentrate completely on Square, the digital payments company he set up in 2009.
not sure anyone has heard but,
I resigned from Twitter pic.twitter.com/G5tUkSSxkl
— jack⚡️ (@jack) November 29, 2021
Parag Agrawal, graduated in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-Mumbai and went on to complete his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. Before joining Twitter, he has worked with Microsoft, Yahoo and AT&T in research roles. He then joined Twitter in 2011 as a software engineer and went on to become the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in 2017, being responsible for Twitter company’s technical strategy. He also oversaw machine learning and AI across consumer, revenue and science teams.
With particularly good grasp over mathematics and expertise in dealing with large databases, Parag moved to USA in 2005 and was considered one of the top engineers at Twitter. He was a part of the TAG group that oversaw new products and technologies with Twitter. Parag was appointed by Dorsey to oversee a new decentralized social media project ‘Bluesky’ in 2019.
Here is the tweet by Parag Agrawal, on becoming the CEO.
Deep gratitude for @jack and our entire team, and so much excitement for the future. Here’s the note I sent to the company. Thank you all for your trust and support 💙 https://t.co/eNatG1dqH6 pic.twitter.com/liJmTbpYs1
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) November 29, 2021
Apparently, Parag is well-liked by Dorsey, and was unanimously preferred over many for the choice of CEO. His tweet shows how high he thinks of Parag. A New York Times report, quoting Silicon Valley insiders, says that, just like Jack Dorsey, Parag too is “quiet, polite, deeply technical and enthused about an internet where power and control are given back to users.
Twitter has revealed that as CEO Parag will be given an annual compensation of $1 million as well as stock compensation worth $12.5 million. The share price of Twitter jumped up by 5% after Dorsey announced his resignation.
Parag is now the youngest CEO in the top 500 companies of the S&P 500 index. Here’s wishing him the best for future.
