When Parag Agrawal was appointed CEO of Twitter in November 2021, the IIT graduate joined a steadily growing club of executives from India rising to the top of global corporations, but the 38-year-old executive's brief tenure at the helm of the social media giant was challenging and chaotic.
Less than a year into his job as CEO, India-born Agrawal was ousted from the company by its new owner billionaire Elon Musk who closed the 44 billion dollar deal to acquire the social media behemoth.
An IIT Bombay and Stanford alumnus, Agrawal joined Twitter in 2011 when there were fewer than 1,000 employees. Rising in the company, he became Twitter’s chief technology officer in 2017. Considered a protege of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Agrawal was appointed CEO of Twitter after Dorsey stepped down.
Agrawal previously went to court to hold the Tesla chief to the terms of a deal he had tried to escape.
According to a May 2022 article in The New York Times, if Musk removed him as chief executive, Agrawal could make USD 60 million, as per securities filings.
Agrawal is married to Vineeta Agarwala, a physician and adjunct clinical professor at Stanford Medicine. They have two children.