Leaders to Watch: who to watch in Indian business

● 18 leaders tracked21 storiesNew Arun MisraUpdated 01.10.26 · 08:54 IST

Big story
Shailesh Jejurikar now owns both of P&G’s numbers
P&G paid its new chief executive $17.9 million last year and its median employee $68,600, down almost $11,000. The more revealing number in the same filings is organic sales growth of 1%.

Analysis
Nikesh Arora added almost a billion dollars of recurring revenue in a quarter and booked a loss
Analysis
Neal Mohan made every video on YouTube more popular, and the money harder to reach
Analysis
Jayshree Ullal delivered Arista’s first three billion dollar quarter, then guided margins down
Analysis
Sudhir Sitapati resigned from Godrej Consumer Products three days after shareholders voted to keep him

The Leaders

Class of 2026 · updated when they move

Aasif Malbari

Managing Director and CEO, Godrej Consumer Products

Handed a company the morning its shares fell 10%, because the man who had just told analysts the plan had walked out.

Albinder Dhindsa

Chief Executive Officer, Eternal

He built Blinkit, was twice asked to leave by the man whose company bought it, and now runs that company. The habit underneath is a willingness to declare his own model wrong and pay to replace it.

Ananya Birla

Founder and Chairperson, Svatantra Microfin Limited

Founded India's second largest microfinance lender at seventeen, held it through the worst two years the sector has had in a decade, and is selling none of it in its own IPO.

Arun Misra

Chief Executive Officer, Vedanta Limited

Vedanta’s board gave Arun Misra one year to prove that splitting itself into five companies created value rather than paperwork. The business it handed him to prove it with is the one he was already running. On 30 July 2026, the same afternoon Vedanta Limited reported a 72 per cent jump in consolidated net profit […]

Deepinder Goyal

Vice Chairman and Non-Executive Director, Eternal Limited

He paid ₹4,447 crore for a grocery company the market said would poison him, held it through a 20% drawdown, and then renamed the whole company after it. The bet was his. The execution was somebody else's.

Irina Ghose

Managing Director, India, Anthropic

Anthropic did not hire a researcher for India. It hired the woman who ran Microsoft India, and seven months later the thing she has built is a sales channel, not a brand.

Jayshree Ullal

Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer, Arista Networks

She left a safe Cisco seat for a fifty-person startup with no revenue. Eighteen years later, it's worth a quarter of a trillion dollars.

Kunal Shah

Global Head of WhatsApp, Meta

Twice he has taken something Indians treat as a chore and made it feel like a privilege. Now he runs WhatsApp.

Leena Nair

Global Chief Executive Officer, Chanel

Twenty-nine years arguing for Unilever's people. Now she runs Chanel.

Miten Sampat

Interim CEO, CRED

He built other people's companies bigger for a decade. Now he's ruling out mergers and shipping products of his own, two months into running the one he didn't found.

Nandita Sinha

Chief Executive Officer, Instamart, Swiggy

Thirteen years at Flipkart deciding what goes on a shelf, then four years running Myntra, where she built rapid delivery without shrinking the catalogue. Swiggy has hired her to win quick commerce on range, inside 1,171 rooms of about 4,200 square feet each.