Donald Trump may have to order samosas next time he meets all-American tech CEOs, quips Anand Mahindra

• Global tech multinationals like Google, Microsoft and IBM are banking on Indian-origin managers to drive their businesses.
  
• In the most recent development,Arvind Krishna — who has been associated with IBM for 30 years now — has been elected as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the American giant. He will take charge on April 6.
  
• Krishna will be replacing Ginni Rometty, IBM’s first female CEO, who will retire after 40 years.

Anand Mahindra is the first business leader to laud IBM after it announced Arvind Krishna as its chief executive officer. In his trademark style, he also added a joke saying that Donald Trump will now have to serve samosas and not hamburgers at his tech conclaves.

Well, already four top tech companies are being led by Indians. Sundar Pichai at Google, Satya Nadella at Microsoft and Shantanu Narayen at Adobe.


IBM — one of America’s oldest tech companies — has been setting standards in diversity in its leadership for a long time now. Krishna will be replacing Ginni Rometty — its first female CEO, who will retire after 40 years.

The IIT Kanpur graduate will now have to keep up with the extremely high growth that the company saw under her helm. In her long reign, IBM acquired almost 65 companies — and expanded to new areas like hybrid cloud, security, industry and data, and AI domain. In fact, she built a $21 billion hybrid cloud business for the tech giant from scratch.


The man with the Red Hat

Krishna too was the mastermind behind one of IBM’s most prized acquisitions, Red Hat at $34 billion. Analysts now expect much more of this savviness from him to ride over the rapidly changing technology environment.

And, IBM has already been transforming rapidly since it shed its computer business in 2005. Ever since, one of Rometty’s achievements was to make strides in the cognitive software business led by IBM Watson.

Krishna, who will take charge on April 6, is already heading IBM’s most future-savvy businesses -- cloud and cognitive software. He claims that both these technologies can solve the ‘toughest problems’ that their clients face. "We are looking ahead to help our clients advance the transformation of their business while also remaining the global leader in the trusted stewardship of technology,” Krishna said.

The shareholders are thrilled with his entry too. IBM’s shares jumped by nearly 5% after the new CEO’s announcement. "He is an ideal leader to succeed Ginni and take IBM and its clients into the next chapter of the cloud and cognitive era. Jim will help Arvind and IBM to accelerate and scale the benefits of Red Hat, while ensuring that Red Hat also preserves its unique culture and commitment to open source innovation,” IBM said.

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