An Indian-Born Is 2nd Highest-Paid CEO in US; Know About Nikesh Arora

New Delhi: Indian-born Nikesh Arora has secured second spot on The Wall Street Journal’s 2023 list of highest-paid CEOs in the US.

The 56-year-old Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, is among 17 executives of Indian descent who have made it to the top 500. Shantanu Narayen of Adobe follows Arora at No. 11.

Arora’s total compensation, primarily from stock options, reached $151.43 million.

The 1968-born Arora is an alumnus of Delhi’s Air Force Public School, Subroto Park. He completed his electrical engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi, and also has an MS degree in Finance from Boston College as well as an MS in Business Administration from Northeastern University.

Arora rose to prominence after being appointed Google’s chief business officer. In 2014, he joined SoftBank in Japan, where he had a four-year stint. Since 2018, he’s been steering Palo Alto Networks, a cybersecurity firm.

Hock Tan of Broadcom topped the The Wall Street Journal list with earnings of $162 million.

Among the other Indian-Americans in the list include Sanjay Malhotra  of Micron Technology, Ajei Gopal of Ansys and Reshma Kewalramani of Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai opted for non-traditional compensation structures in 2023, and thus earned a relatively modest $8.80 million. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, like Pichai, also opted for non-traditional structure and earned $24.40 million.