25% Silicon Valley startup bosses, 58 top-notch global CEOs of Indian-Origin: FM

India's higher education has produced the best company executives in the world, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday, as she acknowledged the conducive ecosystem in India. In the S&P (Standard and Poor's) top 500 companies list, the number of Indian CEOs is only next to the figure from the United States, she further pointed out.

"Globally, I might be saying something which all of you might be already aware of, 58 top-notch company CEOs are Indian in origin. They are in 11 such companies which are multinational firms," Sitharaman said during her address at the convocation event of Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Kancheepuram. "These firms have a collective revenue of 1 trillion while 4 trillion in turnover," the finance minister asserted, pointing out: "58 India educated CEOs are managing this scale of corporate sizes. But that does not mean that we don't have to work on our education system. We have to keep up the system to continue such feats. We are at a juncture to take India in a leap-frogging sense."

Sundar Pichai of Google and Twitter's Parag Agrawal are some of the Indian-origin top executives.

India forms the second-largest contingent of the executives managing big firms, the minister said, only next to the US. "Lift your collars with pride, 25 per cent of Silicon Valley startups are managed by Indians".

Citing the UN population 2019 data, the minister also highlighted that India's working population will overtake China in 2028. "That working age population will reach the level of 65 per cent - of entire population - by 2036 and it stay at the level till 2047," Sitharaman further underlined.

This would help contribute to the GDP of the country, she stressed, further saying: "It is only when they are skilled, only when they are trained and given equal opportunities - irrespective of gender and class - that they would be able to contribute to the growth of the country. This brings forth the importance of training them today."