Arora began his career at Fidelity Investments in 1992, holding a variety of finance and technology management positions, ultimately serving as vice president, finance of Fidelity Technologies. Arora has also worked for Deutsche Telekom, Putnam Investments, Fidelity Investments. He was also been a board member of Sprint Corporation, Colgate-Palmolive and Yahoo! Japan.’
Nikesh Arora, born February 9, 1968, is an Indian-American business executive. He has been the chairman and chief executive officer of the American cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks since June 2018. Arora was formerly a senior executive at Google and president of SoftBank Group from October 2014 to June 2016. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his net worth was estimated at $1.5 billion in early 2024.
Early life
Born to an Indian Air Force officer, Arora completed his schooling at The Air Force School, and went on to graduate from Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University (presently IIT (BHU)) in Varanasi, India, with a Bachelors in Engineering in Electrical Engineering in 1989. He holds a M.S. degree in Finance from Boston College and an MBA from Northeastern University. He has held the CFA designation since 1999.
Career
In 2000, Arora established T-Motion, a subsidiary within Deutsche Telekom, “providing value-added services to the 3G Services of Deutsche Telekom.” A few years after, in 2002, T-Motion was integrated into T-Mobile’s core services.
Arora joined Google in 2004. He held multiple senior operating leadership roles at Google, as vice president, Europe operations from 2004 to 2007, president Europe, Middle East and Africa from 2007 to 2009, and president, global sales operations and business development from 2009 to 2010. He was senior vice president and chief business officer of Google Inc. (Google) since January 2011 until July 2014.
He left Google in July 2014 resigning from the post of senior vice president and chief business officer.
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SoftBank Corp.
Arora was president and chief operating officer of SoftBank Corp. from 2014 to 2016 receiving total compensation of over $200 million, a Japanese record at the time.
Palo Alto Networks
In June 2018, Arora became the CEO and chairman of Palo Alto Networks. In 2023, Arora’s total compensation from Palo Alto Networks was $151.4 million, up 1,355% from the previous year and representing a CEO-to-median worker pay ratio of 735-to-1 for the company.
According to The Times of India report, Nikesh Arora ranked second on the Wall Street Journal’s 2023 list of highest paid US CEOs with $151.43 million.
Other experiences
Arora was chief marketing officer and a member of the management board at T-Mobile, Bharti Airtel, Europe and serves as a Trustee at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles, California. Since 2007, Arora has been a senior advisor to Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm.
From 2001 to 2004, he was chief marketing officer of the T-Mobile International Division of Deutsche Telekom AG. He was chief executive officer and founder of T-Motion PLC, which merged with T-Mobile International in 2002.
Arora began his career at Fidelity Investments in 1992, holding a variety of finance and technology management positions, ultimately serving as vice president, finance of Fidelity Technologies. Arora has also worked for Deutsche Telekom, Putnam Investments, Fidelity Investments. He was also been a board member of Sprint Corporation, Colgate-Palmolive and Yahoo! Japan.
Arora has a daughter from his first marriage. His second marriage was to Ayesha Thapar, an Indian industrial heiress, in 2014. They have a son.
