Indians in the U.S. have come a long way, surviving exclusionary and xenophobic waves such as the California Alien Land Law of 1913, the Asian Barred Act of 1917, the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, and are now the second-largest immigrant group in the U.S. An article in Fortune Magazine documents some recent successes.
- Next April, Laxman Narasimhan will take over from Howard Schultz as the CEO of Starbucks.
- In November, Sunil Kumar was appointed as the first person of color to become president of Tufts University.
- In October, Naureen Hassan took over as President of UBS Americas.
- Earlier in July, Sowmyanarayan Sampath took over as the CEO of Verizon Business and Jayathi Murthy became the President of Oregon State University–the first woman of color to take this position.
Indian-origin leaders in Silicon Valley are well-documented by the likes of Vivek Wadhwa, and Annalee Saxenian.
Several other well-known and well-capitalized companies led by Indians include Arista, Barclays, Cadence, Deloitte, FedEx, Flex, GoDaddy, Hubspot, Illumina, Micron, NetApp, Palo Alto Networks, Panera Bread, Reckitt Benckiser, Stryker, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Vimeo, VMWare, Wayfair, Western Digital, Workday, and ZScaler.
Companies currently led or owned by Indians have a market capitalization of more than $6 trillion, just over 10% of the total market cap of all companies listed on the NASDAQ. Some notable companies include Adobe, Alphabet, Microsoft, IBM, Novartis, and soon Starbucks.
Some Indian-led startups with multi-billion-dollar valuations are those of: Jyoti Bansal (Harness, $4 billion), Naval Ravikant (AngelList, $4 billion), or Payal Kadakia (ClassPass, $1 billion).
Indians have done well in the healthcare, hospitality, and technology industries; and there is Vice President Kamala Harris in the White House.
Last updated: December 26th, 2025
