CEOs Of Top 100 Companies Of India - How Many Did An MBA?

This report will attempt to gauge the general trends followed around the qualifications and the alma mater of these men and women.

By the end of this report, we will be able to answer the following questions:

1. Which B-Schools/graduate colleges produce the maximum number of C-suite Executives in the top-100 companies of India.
2. How many business leaders haven't actually pursued a post-graduation and/or graduation course?
3. What percentage of Executives prefer to do their MBA from abroad than from Indian management institutes?

• Do you need to be a post-graduate to reach the top?

As illustrated below, 37% of business leaders do not have an MBA or any other form of post-graduation degree. Out of this, Mr Rajesh Mehta of Rajesh Exports has not even pursued an undergraduate degree and is worth $2.6 Billion as of 2017, making him the 61st richest man in the world. Mr Mukesh Ambani, the world's 18th richest man, is only a graduate. 33 Business leaders in this list do not possess a post-graduation degree.

Therefore, out of every 5 business leaders, 2 do not have an MBA or a post-graduation qualification. Therefore it is clear that an MBA/post-graduation is not necessary to rise to the top.

• How many business leaders have done their MBAs locally?

Out of the list of business leaders of the top 100 Indian companies, 21 out of 89 CEOs have done an MBA locally and the same number of professionals have pursued their management degrees from foreign institutes. The latter consists of institutes such as the Wharton School of Management, Harvard Business School, Cornell University, London Business School etc. The most preferred programme pursued abroad, apart from an MBA, is the Advanced Management Programme at the Harvard Business School.

It must be noted that 17 of the 89* business leaders in this list have pursued post-graduation degrees other than an MBA.

*(The data for 11 CEOs was not available)

• Which Indian B-Schools have maximum representation across the top 100 Indian companies?

Unsurprisingly, the holy trinity of IIMs makes up over 50% of the 10 Indian B-Schools' alumni. JBIMS is at 3rd place in terms of representation, thereby upholding its reputation as the CEO factory of India. Up there with the top-10 B-Schools are management institutes such as TAPMI, SIBM Pune, and IMI New Delhi.

Apart from B-Schools, it must also be noted that 9% of these business leaders are also members of the Insitute of Chartered Accountants of India. 2 of the 100 individuals are also lateral entries from the Indian Administrative Services.

Most of these business leaders hail from some of the most prestigious undergraduate institutes in India and abroad such as IITs, NITs, BITS, St. Stephen's, SRCC, etc. The IITs lead the pack, the alumni of which account for 14 of the 91* business leaders featuring in this list, followed by NITs (6) and BITS (5).

*(The data for 9 CEOs was not available)

Here is the list of CEOs of the top-100 companies in India, according to Fortune magazine's list for the year 2017:

(Wherever all three columns contain "NA", it implies that the company is without a CEO due to arrests and criminal investigation against CEOs, sudden resignation, or re-structuring of management)

Company	Name of CEO/Chairman/MD	MBA/Post-Graduation	Graduation College
Indian Oil Corporation	Sanjiv Singh	NA	IIT Roorkee
Reliance Industries	Mukesh Ambani	Stanford (Discontinued)	UDCT
State Bank of India	Arijit Basu	JBIMS Mumbai	IIT Delhi
Tata Motors	Guenter Butschek	NA	Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University
Rajesh Exports	Rajesh Mehta	NA	NA
Bharat Petroleum	D. Rajkumar	IIM Bangalore	IIT Madras
Hindustan Petroleum	Mukesh Kumar Surana	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Oil & Natural Gas Corporation	Shashi Shanker	IGNOU	ISM Dhanbad
Coal India	Sutirtha Bhattacharya	Indian Administrative Services	Presidency College, Kolkata
Tata Consultancy Services	Rajesh Gopinathan	IIM Ahmedabad	NIT Trichy
Tata Steel	T.V. Narendran	IIM Calcutta	NIT Trichy
ICICI Bank	Chanda Kochhar	JBIMS Mumbai	Jai Hind College, ICAI
Larsen & Toubro	S.N. Subrahmanyan	SIBM Pune	Kurukshetra University
Hindalco Industries	Satish Pai	NA	IIT Madras
Bharti Airtel	Gopal Vittal	IIM Calcutta	Madras Christian College
HDFC Bank	Aditya Puri	ICAI	Panjab University
Mahindra & Mahindra	Anand Mahindra	Harvard Business School	Lawrence School, Lovedale
NTPC	Gurdeep Singh	IIM Ahmedabad	Data Unavailable
Vedanta	Kuldip Kumar Kaura	London Business School	BITS, Pilani
Infosys	Salil Parekh	Cornell University	IIT Bombay
Maruti Suzuki India	Kenichi Ayukawa	NA	Osaka University
Essar Oil	Lalit Kumar Gupta	NA	Jiwaji University, Gwalior
HDFC	Keki Mistry	ICAI	Mumbai University
Wipro	Abidali Neemuchwala	IIT Bombay	NIT Raipur
Axis Bank	Shikha Sharma	IIM Ahmedabad	LSR
JSW Steel	Sajjan Jindal	NA	MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology
Punjab National Bank	Sunil Mehta	Wharton School of Management	CAIIB
Bank of Baroda	P.S. Jayakumar	XLRI Jamshedpur	Madras University
GAIL (India)	B.C. Tripathi	NA	MNNIT Allahabad
Canara Bank	Rakesh Sharma	IGNOU	Chaudhary Charan Singh University
HCL Technologies	C Vijaykumar	NA	PSG College of Technology
Bank of India	Dinabandhu Mohapatra	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
MRPL	M. Venkatesh	NA	MIT, Manipal
Steel Authority of India	P.K. Singh	NA	IIT Roorkee
ITC Limited	Sanjiv Puri	Wharton School of Management	IIT Kanpur
Vodafone India	Sunil Sood	IIM Calcutta, Harvard Business School	IIT Delhi
Motherson Sumi Systems	Vivek Chaand Sehgal	NA	Delhi University
Union Bank of India	Rakiran Rai Gundaydka	NA	University of Agricultural Sciences
Grasim Industries	Dilip Gaur	Harvard Business School	Data Unavailable
Idea Cellular	Himanshu Kapania	IIM Bangalore	BITS, Mesra
Kotak Mahindra Bank	Uday Suresh Kotak	JBIMS Mumbai	Sydenham College
Hindustan Unilever	Sanjiv Mehta	Harvard Business School	Data Unavailable
Sun Pharmaceuticals	Dilip Shanghvi	NA	Bhawanipur Education Society, University of Calcutta
IDBI Bank	Balasubramanyam Sriram	AIMA,St. Stephen's College	Data Unavailable
General Insurance Corporation of India	Alice G. Vaidyan	Harvard Business School	Kerala University
Tech Mahindra	C.P. Gurnani	NA	NIT, Rourkela
Reliance Infrastructure	Lalit Jalan	Wharton School of Management	IIT Kanpur
Hero MotoCorp	Pawan Munjal	NA	NIT Kurukshetra
Bharat Heavy Electricals	Atul Sobti	IMI New Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad	Data Unavailable
Tata Power Company	Praveer Sinha	NLSI, IIT Delhi	IIT Delhi
Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited	S.N. Pandey	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Central Bank of India	Rajeev Rishi	NA	Panjab University
Power Finance Corporation	Rajeev Sharma	FMS Delhi	IIT Roorkee
Power Grid Corporation of India	I.S. Jha	NA	NIT Jamshedpur
Syndicate Bank	Melwyn Oswald Rego	SIBM Pune	Data Unavailable
UltraTech Cement	KK Maheshwari	ICAI	University of Mumbai
Petronet LNG	Prabhat Singh	NA	IIT Kanpur
Rural Electrification Corp.	Dr. P.V. Ramesh	Indian Administrative Services	Christian Medical College & Hospital
Jet Airways (India)	Vinay Dube	University of North Carolina	Knox College, IIinois
Bajaj Finserv	Sanjiv Bajaj	Harvard Business School	University of Pune
Ashok Leyland	Vinod Kumar Dasari	J.L. Kellogg School of Management	University of Louisville
Reliance Communications	Gurdeep Singh	NA	BITS, Pilani
Bajaj Auto	Rajiv Bajaj	University of Warwick, UK	College of Engineering, Pune
Adani Enterprises	Vinay Prakash	NA	Institute of Engineering & Technology
Indian Overseas Bank	R. Subramania Kumar	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
IFFCO	U.S. Awasthi	University of Agricultural Sciences	IIT(BHU)
Corporation Bank	Jai Kumar Garg	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
NABARD	Harsh Kumar Bhanwala	IIM Ahmedabad	Data Unavailable
New India Assurance Co. Ltd.	Gopalan Srinivasan	NA	University of Madras
Jindal Steel & Power	N.A. Ansari	Wharton School of Management, INSEAD	Aligarh Muslim University
Andhra Bank	NA	NA	NA
Oriental Bank of Commerce	Mukesh Kumar Jain	Delhi School of Economics	Data Unavailable
Ambuja Cements	Ajay A. Kapur	The Wharton School	St. Xavier's, Mumbai
Yes Bank	Rana Kapoor	Rutgers University	SRCC, Delhi University
Allahabad Bank	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Tata Communications	Vinod Anand Kumar	NA	BITS, Pilani
Interglobe Aviation (IndiGo)	Rahul Bhatia	NA	University of Waterloo
IndusInd Bank	Romesh Sobti	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
UCO Bank	Ravi Krishan Takkar	NIBM Pune	SRCC, Delhi University
Future Retail	Kishore Biyani	NA	HR College, Mumbai
Asian Paints	K.B.S. Anand	IIM Calcutta	IIT Bombay
Indian Bank	Kishor Kharat	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Lupin	Vinita D. Gupta	Kellogg School of Management	University of Mumbai
Reliance Capital	Jai Anmol Ambani	NA	Warwick Business School, UK
UPL	Jaidev Shroff	NA	Mumbai University
Gitanjali Gems	NA	NA	NA
PTC India	Ashok Haldia	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Aurobindo Pharma	N. Govindarajan	IIT Bombay	Annamalai University
Max Financial Services	Mohit Talwar	Oberoi School	St. Stephen's College
Cipla	Umang Vohra	TAPMI, Manipal	MSRIT, Bangalore
Dr Reddy’s Laboratories	G.V. Prasad	Purdue University	Alagappa College of Technology
CESC	Aniruddha Basu	NA	Aniruddha Basu
Bhushan Steel	Neeraj Singal	NA	Panjab University
EID Parry (India)	S. Suresh	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Siemens	Sunil Mathur	NA	ICAI
Citibank	Pramit Jhaveri	Simon Business School, Rochester	Sydenham College
LIC Housing Finance	Vinay Sah	Lucknow University	Data Unavailable
Vijaya Bank	R.A. Sankara Narayanan	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
MRF	Rahul Mammen	University of Michigan Business School	St. Stephen's College
Jaiprakash Associates	Manoj Gaur	NA	BITS, Pilani

The limitation of this report are:

• The complete educational qualification and data for 20 business leaders was not available via secondary research. This reduces the sample-set from:

1. 100 companies to 89 companies in the column titled "MBA/Post-graduation", since data for 11 business leaders was not available.
2. 100 companies to 91 companies in the column titled "Graduation Institute", since data for 9 business leaders was not available.

• The undergraduate stream cannot be ascertained accurately with the data available online, so the extent of the influence of a person's graduation stream cannot be determined.

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I will also be making a list of the top start-up CEOs of the country and their educational qualifications.

If you have any suggestions to improve this report, let me know in the comments below.