Meet Nikesh Arora, IIT grad, who faced 400 rejections, now CEO of Rs 11,283,000,000,000 company, gets higher salary than Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, his net worth is...

Oracle’s Larry Ellison is not the only one to have outshine Silicon Valley based Indian-origin CEOs like Satya Nadella and Google’s Sundar Pichai, an Indian has achieved the same feat. Indian-origin executive Nikesh Arora made headlines for surpassing earnings of both the tech moguls in 2023 in a very surprising move. However, this was not done in a day, years of hard work, perseverance and lots of rejections molded him into one of the biggest names in the global tech industry.  

Education 

Nikesh Arora was born in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh and learned the hard way as his father’s career in the Indian Air Force shaped him into a disciplined man. After completing his schooling at The Air Force School, he studied engineering at IIT-BHU. Financial limitations could not restrict his desire to study abroad and so Arora applied to universities that exempted application fees.  

At the time he only had USD 100 (approx. Rs 1700 in 1990). Northeastern University in Boston granted him a scholarship in 1990 and surprisingly also offered him an opportunity to teach computer science.  

Career 

Nikesh Arora opened up about his struggles and early life in a conversation with Human of Bombay. He said that even after being an engineering graduate, studying at the US’ Boston University he had to face 400 rejections from various companies at the time of his career beginnings. However, being shaped into a man of courage and discipline he kept going and saved all those rejection letters with him as a motivation to never lose hope.   

His perseverance paid off in 1992 when Fidelity Investments offered him a job. He used this opportunity to rise in his career as he worked hard to make his way up in the top hierarchy and became the company’s Vice President. He later earned dual degrees in MS in Finance and a CFA certification, to boost his career. He also taught a CFA course that helped in getting entry into Google in 2004. 

He spent a whole decade there and during this “amazing” journey he helped in growing Google’s revenue from USD 2 billion to over USD 60 billion but left in 2014 as “It was time to move on” and he “wanted to do something different.” Nikesh Arora was made the CEO of Palo Alto Networks in 2018, and he turned this company as well from just USD 18 billion to over USD 100 billion worth by encouraging better advancements in cloud security and artificial intelligence. 

Today his net worth is USD 1.5 billion or Rs 12,474 crore and as of June 2025 Palo Alto Networks has a market cap of Rs 11,283,000,000,000.