Sabih Khan joins elite league of India-born C-suite executives at global giants

New Delhi: Moradabad-born Sabih Khan has joined an elite league of India-born C-suite executives at global giants after being elevated to the position of chief operating officer of iPhone maker Apple, following the path laid by the likes of Indra Nooyi, Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai.

Khan, who will still have Apple CEO Tim Cook as his leader, will take over his new role from Jeff Williams later this month, rising through the ranks after being at Apple for 30 years and joining the executive team as senior vice president of operations in 2019.

Satya Nadella is the Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, while Sundar Pichai is the CEO of both Google and its holding company Alphabet.

Nadella became CEO in February 2014 after succeeding Steve Ballmer. Pichai became search engine giant Google's CEO in August 2015 and joined the Board of Directors of Alphabet in July 2017.

The club of Indian origin CEOs of multinational giants in diverse fields, although elite, has a fairly large membership.

Shantanu Narayen, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Adobe, one of the largest software companies in the world and Arvind Krishna, Chairman, President and CEO of IBM, are among those active pole bearers.

Joining them are Vasant Narasimhan, the CEO of global pharma major Novartis, and Reshma Kewalramani, CEO and President of global biotech major Vertex.

Similarly, Sanjay Mehrotra, Chairman, President and CEO at Micron Technology; Anirudh Devgan, President and CEO of Cadence, and Leena Nair, Global CEO of Chanel, are among the other significant active members.

Sanjiv Kataria, the ex-CEO of Bata, held the distinction of being the first Indian global CEO of the footwear major. He had resigned from the post last month.

Likewise, Laxman Narasimhan, who parted ways with Starbucks last year after serving as its CEO, had also led another multinational giant Reckitt Benckiser as CEO.

Indra Nooyi who stepped down as CEO of foods and beverages major PepsiCo in 2018 after leading the company for 12 years and serving it in various roles for 24 years and Harish Manwani who became the first Chief Operating Officer of FMCG major Unilever in 2011 after joining the company's Indian arm, HUL as management trainee in 1976, paved the way for India-born executives to head global companies.