Nikesh Arora is a top-paid CEO. The Uttar Pradesh native led major worldwide businesses. He was number two at Softbank and number four at Google. He worked with Wipro, Bharti Airtel, T-Mobile, and Deutsche Telekom. He became CEO of Palo Alto Networks in 2018 for a record $128 million.
Ghaziabad-born IIT Bhubaneswar graduated Nikesh Arora in 1989. After engineering, Arora studied MBA in the US. In 2014, Arora left Google after a decade of rising through the ranks. After joining Softbank, Masayoshi Son called him a “rising star”.
Arora backed Oyo Rooms, Snapdeal, and Ola at Softbank. His business invested nearly $2 billion. He was the world’s highest-paid business executive at $73 million.
His first Softback package set a Japanese record.
Nikesh wants Palo Alto to become the first $100 billion cybersecurity company. He led the firm to a record revenue of $5.5 billion in FY2022, a $27.8 billion market cap growth in three years, and $3.6 billion in shareholder returns. Arora skipped $1 million of his salary to lead Palo Alto during the COVID-19 epidemic. The corporation did not fire anyone.
According to Palo Alto Networks’ financial report, Arora earned approximately $33.5 million in the past two years. Nikesh made $23.28 million, or Rs 173.4 crore at the USD-INR conversion rate average for July 2021, in FY 2021.
On a July 2022 conversion average, Nikesh earned $10.40 million, or Rs 82.7 crore. Nikesh earned nearly Rs 35 lakh every day in the last two years, totaling Rs 256.1 crore. According to the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022, he is one of the world’s richest CEOs with Rs 8,500 crore.
