IIT graduates are leading a few of the biggest tech companies in the world and one such IIT Bombay pass out made it to the headlines when he was appointed as CEO with a massive salary. The IIT Bombay graduate’s salary was around Rs 8 crore when he was hired and along with the salary he also got restricted stock units valued at around Rs 94 crore. His overall salary package was over Rs 100 crore but unfortunately he was fired from his job within one year of joining. The IIT alumnus we are talking about is former Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal who was fired from his post after the micro-blogging platform was acquired by the world's richest man in a massive $44 billion deal. Elon Musk fired Parag Agarwal soon after getting hold of the company and served as CEO for the first few months.
Born in Ajmer, Parag Agrawal was part of a well-educated family. His father was a senior official in the Indian Department of Atomic Energy and his mother is a retired Economics professor. Agrawal completed his graduation from IIT Bombay in 2005 after securing 77 all India rank (AIR). Later he went to the United States to pursue a PhD in computer science at Stanford University.
Before joining Twitter in 2011, Agrawal did internships at Microsoft Research and Yahoo. After working at Twitter for around 6 years, he was appointed as chief technology officer following the departure of Adam Messinger.
Since his exit from Twitter, Parag Agrawal hasn’t joined any other company. His LinkedIn bio just reads ‘Former CEO at Twitter’. Parag Agrawal is married to Vineeta Agarwala, who is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The engineer is parent to two children.
