New Delhi: In a proud moment for the country, the list of the world’s top 10 CEOs features a majority of India. Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani has pipped Microsoft and Google CEOs to bag the 2nd spot. While Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is leading the list, RIL’s Ambani stands at 2nd on Brand Finance’s Brand Guardianship Index 2023.
Ambani has moved into 2nd position, overtaking Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, who now sits in 3rd place. They are joined at the top of the ranking by the brand guardians of several well-known brands: Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen (4th), Google’s Sundar Pichai (5th), and Deloitte’s Punit Renjen (6th).
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Ambani continues to oversee Reliance’s transition into green energy, and the diversification of its telecoms and retail branches. This commitment to positive change has positively raised his perception as Chairman and Managing Director of the group and is reflected by Ambani’s top performance on the ‘Inspires positive change’ metric within the Brand Guardianship Index, the report said.
“We have constructed a balanced scorecard of measures that capture the ability of a CEO to act as the guardian of their company’s brand and a steward of long-term shareholder value,” Brand Finance said in the 2023 report.
India dominates in World’s highest ranked CEOs’ list
The list of top 10 CEOs features as many as seven Indian names – Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Shantanu Narayen Punit Renjen, N Chandrasekaran, Piyush Gupta along with Ambani. Here’s the list of the top 10:
1- Jensen Huang – Nvidia
2- Mukesh Ambani – Reliance
3- Satya Nadella – Microsoft
4- Shantanu Narayen – Adobe
5- Sundar Pichai – Google
6- Punit Renjen – Deloitte
7- Estee Lauder – Fabrizio Freda
8- Natarajan Chandrasekaran – Tata
9- Piyush Gupta – DBS
10 – Huateng Ma – Tencent
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Notably, another Indian-origin CEO – Leena Nair of CHANEL – has bagged the 11th position of the list annd is the highest ranked female in the ranking. Only 7 out of 100 brand guardians are female.
Other Indian brand leaders among the top 100 list include Anand Mahindra (Mahindra Group), Sunil Mittal (Airtel), Dinesh Kumar Khara (SBI), Salil Parekh (Infosys).
Half of this year’s top ten Chief Executives or equivalents came from the tech and media sectors, down from 9 out of 10 in 2022, highlighting a diversification of sectors at the top of the ranking in 2023. Engineering and Finance are the most common backgrounds that those in the ranking came from, accounting for 27 of the brand guardians.
At a country level, the US leads the ranking and China follows. However, Indian Chief Executives also performed well, with six in the top 100 and two in the top ten. There was a further 4 Indian-American CEOs in the top 10. Germany also accounted for 6 CEOs in the ranking, while the UAE punched well above its weight with 3 CEOs in the top 100.
