The story of Rajat Gupta is too complex to be put under one category, be it an inspiring tale or a cautionary story. However, one of the most revered and richest Indian CEOs globally, Gupta faced challenging times where he had to go to prison. Nevertheless, Gupta retained many of his admirers despite his fall from grace who refused to forget his meteoric and inspiring rise from being an orphan to one of the most powerful business leaders and a committed philanthropist giving back in his home country.
Gupta lost his father at just 16 years of age and then his mother just two years later. He and his three siblings, left orphaned, decided to move ahead without external support. He topped the IIT entrance exam with an All India Rank of 15, earning a mechanical engineering degree from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. Gupta was then lured by the Indian major ITC but decided to opt for a scholarship to study at the famous American institution of Harvard University.
Gupta joined global consulting giant McKinsey & Company in 1973 and then rose through the ranks to script history by becoming the first Indian-origin CEO of a multinational company when he was elected Managing Director in 1994. He served three terms leading McKinsey, taking the firm’s revenue from around $1.2 billion in 1993 to around $3.4 billion by 2002. He also co-founded the premium Indian management institute Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad in 2001. He also served as director for Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble.
His net worth was once estimated at around $100 million but Gupta reportedly wanted to join the billionaires club and turn from an ace consultant to a master dealmaker. Gupta confronted troubled waters when a billionaire friend of his called Raj Rajaratnam was charged for an insider trading scam. Then in 2012, a federal jury found Gupta guilty of insider trading charges. Gupta served a prison term of two years. It included 8 weeks of solitary confinement. He stepped out of prison in 2016. He later apologized for letting people down and admitted that there had been "errors and misjudgements" on his part. Gupta, however, asserted that he was "not an insider trader".
