While we have already reported exit of Jan Koum, the co-founder of social media messaging app WhatsApp leaving Facebook, the market is now buzzing with news regarding who could be the next CEO of the major technology giant.
If reports are to be believed another Indian and a former Google employee “Neeraj Arora” could head the cross-messaging platform and is being considered for the top position.
Company’s “All Thing Business Guy”, Neeraj Arora is an IIT graduate with a degree from the Indian School of Business. He gave up his prestigious top hierarchy job at M&A at Google to become a part of one of the hottest Silicon Valley Startups.
- Neeraj started his career with a cloud solutions company in 2000, Accellion right after graduation and was one of the earliest engineers at the company who contributed in building pieces of the core technology.
- Arora has been the principal for corporate development at Google until November 2011 and has also been a Chief manager at Times Internet Ltd before.
- Earlier in 2009, Neeraj decided to leave Google and took over acquisitions and strategic investments for the global giants.
- His LinkedIn profile clearly reveals his major play in prominent acquisitions such as Slide, Cleversense, Dailydeal.de, Picnik, PittPatt, and Talkbin.
Neeraj has been an investor in Pune-based MindTickle, a startup that aims to bring a sea change in employment and engagement space. In addition, this IIT alumni has also been an active board member at digital payments major, Paytm.
In 2014, Mohit Garg, co-founder of training software firm MindTickle who has also been Arora’s batchmate at ISB had said,
From Times Internet to Google to WhatsApp, Arora has had an uncanny ability to identify opportunities, He is well connected and this has helped him move up the ladder. He’s also very unassuming and down to earth.
One of the Arora’s major achievement has been to convince Anil Ambani of Reliance Communications to facilitate the unlimited use of WhatsApp with an Rs 16/month data plan. The scheme was an instant success and garnered a tremendous reception in the Indian market.
A recent report published at TechCrunch said,
one possible candidate for the CEO role would be WhatsApp business executive Neeraj Arora, a former Google corporate development manager who’s been with WhatsApp since 2011 — well before the Facebook acquisition.
Being associated with WhatsApp for over seven years now, Neeraj is currently being considered as Number 1 prospect for its next CEO.
If the ongoing rumors turn out to be true, the world will witness another Indian techie leading the helm of message service provider right in the league of Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen- other Indian guys who are leaders in their respective companies in the technology landscape.