Indians in global roles at MNCs

Sameer Suneja, Nitin Paranjpe and Atul Singh elevated to global roles in past two months

What is common to Sameer Suneja, Nitin Paranjpe and Atul Singh?

They were all leaders of well-known consumer products multinationals in India and have elevated to global roles in the past couple of months.

Suneja, who was heading Indian operations of Italian sugar confectionery maker Perfetti Van Melle, is set to become the global CEO of the privately-held confectionery giant starting October 1. Suneja is the third Indian to be elevated to this level of a global consumer company, after Indra Nooyi who became PepsiCo's Chairperson and CEO in 2006, and Rakesh Kapoor who was elevated as the global CEO of Reckitt Benckiser in 2011.

During the last week of July, Unilever named Nitin Paranjpe as the global head of Unilever Plc's home care business. Parajnpe was earlier the MD and CEO HUL taking care of the Indian business.

On June 19, Coca-Cola had elevated Atul Singh, who was the head of India and Southwest Asia operations, as the deputy president of Coca-Cola's Pacific Group. Singh, who took over in his new role on July 1, is now responsible for the company’s key business units in China and India. Singh now oversees Coca-Cola’s operations in 10 of the 38 Asia Pacific countries.

Earlier, Vikram Pandit had worked as the CEO of Citigroup, and Ajay Banga is currently the CEO of MasterCard Worlwide.

India-born Anshu Jain also took over as co-CEO of Deutsche Bank in June 2012.

IIT-Kharagpur pass-out Ajit Jain is another example. Jain is another India-born CEO who heads the reinsurance business division of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathway.

Indians are not on the back seat on when comes to the technology domain. Hyderabad-born Shantanu Narayen is the CEO of Adobe, while Sanjay Jha had served as the chairman and CEO of Motorola Mobility, but had stepped down as CEO after Google completed acquisition of Motorola Mobility in May 2012.