Famous Indian alumni from Bloomberg’s top 5 business schools

On Tuesday, Bloomberg released its business school rankings for 2015, with Harvard Business School, Booth School of Business (University of Chigago) and Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern University) making to the top three. Besides these, the top 10 (in order of rank) includes Sloan School of Management (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania), Columbia Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Fuqua School of Business (Duke University), Haas School of Business (University of California Berkeley) and Ross School of Business (University of Michigan).

Over the years, some of these top-ranked business schools have been home to Indian students, who upon graduation (either with an MBA degree or a PhD) have gone on to become business leaders in some of the top global corporations, politicians (some, even ministers) and academicians. Here’s a list of the most famous Indian alumni from Bloomberg’s top 5 business schools:

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL (Ranked #1)

Jayant Sinha

Currently the minister of state for finance in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, Sinha graduated with an MBA from Harvard in 1992. After his graduation, he joined McKinsey and Co. in Boston, before joining hedge fund Courage Capital later. His most recent assignment (before entering politics) was that of a partner at Omidiyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm.

Ratan Tata

Chairman-emeritus of the Tata Sons, Ratan Tata graduated from Harvard with an advanced management programme (AMP) in 1975. He took over as chairman of the Tata Group in 1991, a position he held till 2012, when Cyrus Mistry succeeded him.

Ashish Nanda

Nanda is the director of his alma mater—Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. After graduating, he worked with Tata Motors. Five years on, Nanda won an invitation to join the prestigious economics programme at Harvard, following which he taught at the school for 13 years.

BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS (Ranked #2)

Satya Nadella

Soon after he graduated in computer engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Nadella received his first job offer from Microsoft. Around the same time, he was accepted at Booth School of Business, according to the university’s website. He deferred his admission, opting for the weekend MBA programme, before finally graduating from the school in 1997. In 2014, Nadella was appointed Microsoft’s third chief executive officer.

Dilip Sankarreddy

The founder and CEO of investment management company QuietGrowth, Sankarreddy is among the most recent graduates of Booth, passing out of the university in December 2010. He also unsuccessfully contested the Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections in 2014, from Malkajgiri (Hyderabad) as a candidate of the Lok Satta Party.

KELLOGG SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT (Ranked #3)

Roshni Nadar Malhotra

The founder and CEO of the Shiv Nadar Foundation, Roshni Nadar graduated from Kellogg with an MBA in social enterprise management and strategy. She also currently serves as the executive director and chief executive of HCL Corporation.

Venkatesh Shankar

Venky, as he’s popularly known, currently serves as a professor of marketing at Mays Business School in the Texas A&M University. Shankar, before receiving his PhD in marketing from Kellogg in 1995, undertook an MBA programme in the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) in 1986. He is also an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur), where he received his bachelors degree in engineering.

SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT (Ranked #4)

Adi Godrej

The chairman of the Godrej Group, Adi Godrej left India when he was 17 after he was accepted into the prestigious Sloan School of Management. He finished his bachelors and masters degrees in management in 1963. He returned to India to join his family business at the age of 21.

Sumantra Ghoshal

A former physicist by trade, Kolkata-born Ghoshal became a leading management academician. Ghoshal, once employed by Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, left India to pursue management science, and during his academic years, received degrees from Harvard and MIT. He received his PhD from Sloan School of Management in 1983, and three years later, a Doctor of Business Administration from Harvard. He passed away in 2004.

Narendra Patni

Patni, who passed away in June last year, is considered a pioneer in the Indian software outsourcing industry. He founded Patni Computer Systems (PCS) in 1978, the same company in which the Infosys co-founders once worked. Patni is an engineering graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (Roorkee), following which he received his MBA from Sloan School of Management at MIT.

WHARTON BUSINESS SCHOOL (Ranked #5)

Sundar Pichai

A Siebel Scholar, Pichai, who was recently appointed Google’s new chief executive, graduated with an MBA from Wharton in 2002. He pursued his MS degree in material sciences and engineering from Stanford University. Pichai joined Google in 2004 after stints at Applied Materials and McKinsey and Co.

Sachin Pilot

A minister in the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, Pilot is currently the chief of the Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee. After receiving his diploma in marketing from IMT Ghaziabad, Pilot pursued his MBA from Wharton Business School and graduated in 2001.

Anil Ambani

The chairman of the Reliance Group, Ambani graduated with an MBA from Wharton in 1983. Ambani was also the first recipient of the Wharton Indian Alumni Award.