Parag Agarwal, Bringing Laurels To India By Becoming The CEO Of Twitter

Parag Agarwal, an Indian IIT-Alumnus steps up as the new CEO of Twitter, the 16th most popular social networking application worldwide. Being appointed as the new Twitter CEO, Parag Agarwal’s net worth has been raised to 1.52 million according to PeopleAI. India must celebrate having one more addition to the team of India-born Silicon Valley CEOs – Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Arvind Krishna (IBM CEO), and Shantanu Narayen, who is the Adobe CEO. Jack Dorsey, the ex-CEO and co-founder of Twitter, announced his retirement on 29th November evening without mentioning any specific reasons. 

‘I have decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders’ 

– Says Jack Dorsey.

Who Is Parag Agarwal – Know His Journey:

Parag Agarwal, an Indian cum American born in Mumbai, Maharashtra in the year 1984 was married to Vineeta Agarwal, who is also a whiz like him. Parag Agarwal Wife, Vineeta is a General Partner at the Venture Captial Company called Andreessen Horowitz. With his father working for the Indian Department of Atomic Energy as a top officer, Parag completed his schooling at Atomic Energy Central School. Later, Parag went to IIT Bombay to pursue his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering. Then, he moved to Stanford University to pursue a doctorate program in Computer Science in the year 2005. Pursuing his Ph.D., he also worked as a research intern in various tech giants like Microsoft, Yahoo, AT&T Labs. 

In October 2011, he joined Twitter as an Ads Engineer and took up the position of Distinguished Software Engineer where he served in the same position for 6 years and 1 month. Later in 2017, Parag was appointed as the Chief Technology Officer where he lead the company’s effort in using AI to show relevant tweets to the users. He has been responsible for shaping the company’s technical strategy, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. 

In December 2019, during his journey as a CTO of Twitter, Jack has given Parag the charge to find a leader for Project Bluesky, which is a research project by Twitter. Project Bluesky will allow social media companies to collaborate on how posts are promoted to users enabling more control in the hands of the users on the content they consume. Parag Agarwal accomplished this by finding Jay Graber as the leader for Project Bluesky in August 2021. 

Post Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO stepping down,  Parag Agarwal immediately sent a mail confirming his new position as the CEO of Twitter. Parag Agarwal’s age being 37, he becomes the youngest CEO in top 500 companies. Twitter mentioned that its new CEO salary will be 1 million US Dollars plus bonuses per annum which is almost 7.5 crores in Indian rupees. The company has also mentioned in the file with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as their new CEO will receive restricted stock units valued at 12.5 million USD. Parag sums up his decade-back relationship with Twitter on his mail and then has written “There is no limit to what we can do together”, which clearly depicts how ambitious he is and the confidence with which he could lead the company. Twitter has started executing a multi-year plan to dramatically increase the value and reach of the company by having 315 million monetizable users by 2023 which will double their revenue. Our new CEO Of Twitter 2021, Parag Agarwal will be assigned with these goals and we will have to wait with our fingers crossed to see how he achieves them. 

What did people say about Parag’s Appointment?

There were both positive and negative comments from various influential people, investors, Wall Street Analysts on the appointment of Parag Agarwal as the Chief Executive Officer of Twitter. See what the world says about this news:

Twitter’s Managing Partner Jesse Cohn and Senior Portfolio Manager Marc Steinberg said that they are confident with Parag stepping as the first full-time CEO of Twitter and Bret Taylor as the incoming Chairman. They have mentioned both of them as the right leaders for the company at the pivotal moment. 

Patrick Collison, the co-founder & CEO of Stripe, an Irish-American Financial Services & SaaS company tweeted 

“Google, Microsoft, Abode, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, and now Twitter run by CEOs who grew up in India. Wonderful to watch the amazing success of Indians in the technology world and a good reminder of the opportunity America offers to immigrants” for which 

Elon Musk replied “USA benefits greatly from Indian Talent” yesterday at 11:55 pm. 

Elliott Management Incorporation founder and investor Paul Singer’s criticism of Dorsey being the leader of both Square and Twitter has also been resolved by appointing Parag as the first full-time CEO of Twitter.  

With all the positive news, we wish Parag Agarwal the best wishes to meet the goals of the company and bring more laurels.