The Top 20 LinkedIn Profiles of 2016

With over 1.5 million followers, the Prime Minister of India has been featured for the second consecutive time on the most viewed CEOs in the ‘Linked Power Profiles’ list. Last year the report equated him to a true leader who has a compelling vision to help steer people forward. Some of his fresh and worthwhile initiatives like Digital India, Make in India, Swachcha Bharat and ‘Powering a Billion Dreams’ embody this vision and drive.

Meet the Chairperson and Managing Director of Biocon, Asia’s leading bio-pharmaceuticals enterprise. She was also featured in the Linked list last year. Named among TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, she is recognized as a global thought leader for Biotechnology. Under her stewardship, Biocon has evolved since its inception in 1978 from an industrial enzymes company to a fully-integrated, innovation-led, emerging global biopharmaceutical enterprise committed to reduce therapy costs of chronic conditions like diabetes, cancer and autoimmune diseases.

He created India’s largest online marketplace Snapdeal. Kunal too was featured in the LinkedIn list of top CEOs last year. He has driven innovation in the new age and is a role model for India’s young and budding entrepreneurs.

She is the Chairman for Accenture in India. She dispelled the myth of ‘all work and no play,’ as she spoke to LinkedIn about how she would either be mountain-climbing or running an outdoors company if she wasn’t in her current role.

Rajan is the Vice President and Managing Director of tech giant Google India. He is responsible for all Sales and Operations in the country. He joined Google in February 2011. His career includes global leadership roles at Microsoft, Dell and McKinsey & Company. Under his leadership, Microsoft India was recognized as the Number 1 subsidiary among the emerging markets worldwide.

He is the co-founder of a Bangalore-based technology firm that offers two services, Practo Ray (an online management software that allows doctors to upload and store medical records and prescriptions, patient history, billing schedule, make appointments, and so on) and Practo.com (a website that helps patients get in touch with doctors). Practo Ray has 10,000+ doctors on the system. Over 10 million electronic patient records (doubling every year) have been created, over 7.5 million unique patients and over 7 million appointments are being made every year. Meanwhile, Practo.com has over 1,00,000 doctors listed from over 310 Indian towns and cities, with comprehensive coverage from the metros of Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Singapore. It has over 1.3 million page views and 30,000 appointments booked every month, with traffic growing at 24 per cent per month.

This man drove Xiaomi’s India operations. Within six months of its launch, Xiaomi had sold over a million phones through flash sales on Flipkart.com, all under Jain’s leadership. Jain and his 19-member team in Bangalore created so much buzz around the snazzy phones that potential buyers would log in hours before the sale opened. An IIT Delhi and IIM Calcutta alumnus, Manu Kumar Jain is the India Head of Xiaomi.

Harmeen Mehta - the Chief Information Officer, India of Bharti Airtel Limited is responsible for providing the overall strategy and leadership to the IT function. She has successfully worked globally across locations such as Hong Kong, Germany, Australia, London, India and Spain in various leadership positions.

Harjeet is an HR leader at Reliance Jio, known for improving bottom line of organization. He has set multiple green field projects and has handled HR for large multinational organizations in various geographies including India, US & Canada. Harjeet’s experience spans a range of industry sectors that include Automotive, Manufacturing, Pharma, Alternate Energy, IT-ITES, Telecom, Healthcare and Retail and has worked with organizations like Tata Motors, Reliance Industries and Piramal Healthcare.

He is the Global CHRO of Bharti Airtel, an Indian telecom company with operations in 20 countries.He made his way into this telecom giant after serving FMCG major Unilever for 23 long years taking positions including vice president, finance & commercial and head, global finance transformation at Unilever’s head office in London. He joined Airtel as the CFO and ever since, there has been no looking back for him.

Richard Rekhy is the Chief Executive Officer of KPMG in India, since October 2012. He has over 28 years of multi layered, multi sectoral, top-of-the-pyramid experience behind him. He has served clients across sectors including advertising, oil and gas, industrial and consumer markets and specifically in the pharmaceuticals, technology, manufacturing and retail domains. He comes with real time extensive experience coupled with detailed understanding of corporate governance, enterprise risk management, internal audit and business processes re-engineering.

Chief HR Officer at Makemytrip.com, Yuvaraj comes with 17 years of Corporate HR experience and 5.5 years of experience with Indian Armed forces as commissioned officer. His infinite exposure to entire gamut of HR with strong exposure to effective organization HR strategy, talent strategy, workforce planning, organization capability plans and so on, is what makes him quite a catch for Makemytrip.

Former Aircel CFO now with Snapdeal. A seasoned senior management professional, Anup comes with exposure to various aspects of business like all CFO functions including supply chain, treasury and banking, funds raising, Corporate Governance including member of board of directors, chief of Audit committee, investment committee, secretarial functions, investor relations, management reporting and business planning, monetizing of businesses and divesting businesses.

Rajiv Sabharwal is the Executive Director on the board of ICICI Bank. He is responsible for Retail Banking, Business Banking, Rural Banking & Financial Inclusion Business. He is also a director on the board of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited and the Non-executive Chairman of ICICI Home Finance Company Limited. He has over 22 years of experience in the Banking/Financial Services industry. He joined ICICI Group in 1998 and has held leadership positions in credit policy, debt management, business analytics, mortgage finance, consumer loans, credit cards, rural and microfinance lending and financial inclusion. His contribution in the growth of mortgage and retail business is widely acknowledged in the industry circles and within ICICI Group.

Chief Marketing Officer, Pepperfry.com – Kashyap has Diverse experience across industries, from E-commerce, Internet, Software Services to Consumer Goods across geographies. He is focused sharply on consumer/customer understanding and delivering to 'new business growth' through senior leadership roles in marketing/advertising, business development, sales and strategy/planning. Now a part of one of the leading furniture and home product portals, he is a key part of the management team who is driving the overall strategy and decision for Pepperfry.

He is the Chief Marketing Officer, South Asia region at OLX, a global Internet company that offers the next generation of free online classifieds in 50 languages and more than 40 countries. Gaurav has helped create a non existent industry and a loved & respected brand. He is an ardent believer in the co-existence of data driven marketing and creative approach to problem solving. Scalability, trend-spotting and fail fast – learn faster are the key to his decision making approach. He has diverse experience spanning 13 years, which includes 7.5 years as a leading digital business expert in companies such as Yahoo and OLX. He says he has experience with small companies, running his own company and handling nascent divisions in big companies.

This man has spent two decades in the communications business working with a range of clients, including Unilever, Cadbury, Vodafone, the Indian Premier League and Tata Motors. He ran a small all-creative agency; managing 360 degree communications on some of India's largest brands; building India's largest, most awarded digital agency; and is now running India's largest and most awarded integrated communications agency – Ogilvy and Mather as the CEO.

He didn’t have money to arrange dinner, Vijay’s story is what every aspiring entrepreneur can relate to. While still in college, this man created a company One97, which provided Value-Added Services or VAS like premium or paid content to mobile phone operators. In 2010, he launched Paytm, an online payment platform. 4,000 employees now, it is an online wallet that is near ubiquitous and a full-blown e-commerce site.

Much like Vijay, his rival Kunal is another name in the startup industry to reckon with. He is the founder o fFreeCharge, which was aimed at driving footfalls for restaurants and retailers. Starting with prepaid phone bill recharge, FreeCharge is now present across several bill payment and recharge categories. The company has evolved into a digital payments platform that is aggressively taking on India's largest mobile wallet player, Paytm, to gain market share. Under his leadership, FreeCharge raised $120 million in funding, primarily from Sequoia Capital India, besides ru-Net Ventures, Sofina, Valiant Capital and Tybourne Capital.

Working for 11 months as a program manager at Microsoft in the US was enough to convince him that he wanted to be his own boss. He started Lenskart in November 2010 with a vision to revolutionize eyewear in India. Mission: To create enthusiastically satisfied customers all the time. As of 2016, Lenskart is delivering 150,000 spectacles a month to Indian consumers and the vision is to deliver 1,50,000 in a day over next 5 years.