Indian-Origin Parag Agrawal Becomes Twitter's CEO; Elon Musk and Others React

The 37-year-old IITian has become the youngest-ever CEO to lead an S&P 500 company.

30 November, 2021
Indian-Origin Parag Agrawal Becomes Twitter's CEO; Elon Musk and Others React

Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey has decided to step down from his position as the Chief Executive Officer, passing the baton onto the Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal, a 37-year-old Indian-origin man who graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology in 2005. The resignation of Jack Dorsey—who has been heading the social networking service since 2015—will come into effect immediately. 

"I've decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders...He's (Parag) been my choice for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs. Parag has been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around. He's curious, probing, rational, creative, demanding, self-aware, and humble. He leads with heart and soul and is someone I learn from daily. My trust in him as our CEO is bone-deep," Dorsey said in an official statement.

Read Jack Dorsey's resignation email to the Twitter team here: 

 

parag agrawal

 

Parag, born in 1984, completed his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and pursued a doctorate in Computer Science from Stanford University thereafter. As CTO of Twitter, he was responsible for the company’s technical strategy, overseeing machine learning and AI across the company. Since joining in 2011, he has led efforts on scaling Twitter Ads systems as well as re-accelerating user growth by improving home timeline relevance. Before joining Twitter, Parag Agrawal was involved with large-scale data management at Microsoft Research, Yahoo! Research, and AT&T Labs.

Here's a look at Parag's response letter to Jack Dorsey and the Twitter team: 

 

parag agrawal

 

Before being elevated to the position of CTO, Agrawal had emerged as Twitter's first Distinguished Engineer owing to his successful efforts in revenue and consumer engineering. What lies ahead for the Indian-origin CEO? Earlier this year, Twitter announced that it aims to have 315 million monetisable daily active users by the end of 2023 while doubling its revenue as well. 

Honouring the success of Indian talent, Irish billionaire entrepreneur Patrick Collison tweeted, "Google, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, and now Twitter run by CEOs who grew up in India. Wonderful to watch the amazing success of Indians in the technology world, and a good reminder of the opportunity America offers to immigrants. (Congrats, Parag!)

Replying to Patrick—and congratulating Parag Agrawal—Tesla's Elon Musk said, "USA benefits greatly from Indian talent."


 

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