The emergence of Pichai's name, pitted against another Indian for the top job at the world's leading technology company, appears unprecedented and reflects the growing number of India-born executives climbing corporate ladders globally.
The appointment of 46-year-old Nadella or Pichai would be a significant achievement for both, as they would join a circle of India-origin executives leading top global firms. Indians at the helm include PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi, MasterCard President and CEO Ajay Banga and Deutsche Bank Co-CEO Anshu Jain.
Nadella appears most likely to be named successor to Ballmer, having emerged as a popular choice given his deeper engineering background compared to that of other internal candidates being considered for the top job.
Hyderabad-born Nadella is a longtime Microsoft executive who led the company's initiatives in cloud computing. He is a “popular choice partly because of his oversight of the enterprise software and cloud computing businesses at Microsoft, one of the strongest and fastest growing parts of the company”, said a report in The New York Times.
Nadella has been getting a vote of approval by a number of advocates for change at Microsoft who believe the company's leader needs to have stronger technical expertise than Ballmer, whose background was in sales.
In addition to Nadella, Microsoft has held conversations with its top sales executive Kevin Turner and Tony Bates, who joined Microsoft through its acquisition of Skype. Stephen Elop, the former Nokia CEO who said he would rejoin Microsoft once its purchase of Nokia's mobile business was complete, has also been considered for the job.
