When Anand Mahindra took to Twitter and said: Indian CEO Virus... No vaccine against it

When Mahindra and Mahindra chief Anand Mahindra speaks, the corporate world in particular, and the rest of the world in general, listen very carefully. So, when he took to Twitter and gave a a statement, everyone sat up and took notice. Without really letting on about the context, he tweeted, "This is one pandemic that we are happy & proud to say originated in India. It’s the Indian CEO Virus… No vaccine against it." Mahindra did not tag anyone in his tweet and the readers had to look at what he was retweeting to try and put things in perspective. It was a tweet by Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, who was talking about a change of guard at Twitter. Although he too added to the initial confusion as he was referencing Google, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Palo Alto Networks and brought up Twitter right at the end of the sentence. And even then, readers had to check who he had tagged before getting the full picture.

It then became clear that what Mahindra was gloating about was the appointment of IIT-Bombay alumnus Parag Agrawal as the CEO of one of the biggest, and arguably the most-known,  tech companies in the world, Twitter. The tweet was referencing the spread of the juggernaut-like Indian-origin, highly educated diaspora into the top echelons of Corporate America.

So, India has Sundar Pichai at Google, Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Shantanu Narayen at Adobe, Arvind Krishna at IBM and so on and so forth! Clearly, the Indian origin club of tech czars is increasing by the day in the US. And, most of them are still young, with Parag Agrawal aged just 37.

While the Mahindra weet was extolling the appointment of Parag Agrawal, what was even more eye-ball grabbing was the prescient remark on the future - "No vaccine against it." In effect, it was a celebration of the fact that the trend of success of the Indian-origin executives was immune to everything. That bodes really well for Indians seeking to conquer the boardrooms of the world away from their own shores.

It was not just Mahindra who was waxing eloquent. The appointment of Agrawal also got many other top CEOs into the action.

The trend of Indians doing well abroad was definitely not lost on others. Apart from Collison, Tesla CEO Elon Musk too took to Twitter to sing praises of Indian executives. He tweeted, "USA benefits greatly from Indian talent!"

Sundar Pichai too got into the action and tweeted, "Wishing you the very best ahead @jack, and congrats @paraga and @btaylor - excited for Twitter's future!"