Before joining Twitter a decade ago in 2011 as a software engineer, Agrawal had stints at Microsoft Research, AT&T Labs and Yahoo! Research. At Twitter, he rose to become the first Distinguished Engineer through his performance across revenue and consumer engineering verticals, including his impact on the acceleration of audience growth in 2016 and 2017.
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“The industry trend now is that the people who have been the closest to the product are being right fully chosen to lead the business. Look at other Indian CEOs like Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai or Arvind Krishna, they come from engineering backgrounds.
“They understand the product and the company strategy well, but most importantly, they know the future roadmap of the products,” Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst and CEO of Greyhound Research, told BusinessLine
He added: “When a founder steps down and professional management comes into place, it is good for the company. Sometimes certain problems require professional treatment while the founder will have an emotional attachment to it. In a way it is good that there’s a professional CEO stepping in.
“Twitter has also changed the structure of management of the board, which will allow a healthy mix of professional management.”
Gogia added: “The users are demanding a very transparent system and new features. The only special thing about being an India-origin CEO is that India is one of the key markets of all social media companies. And Agrawal being from India will help him in understanding the complexities of doing business here. Twitter didn’t even have an India-focussed pricing and that’s the level of unpreparedness for the market it is facing. Whereas, the propensity of more users come from India though as much revenue in dollars.”
“India requires different handling in terms of cultural nuances that needs to be built in to the product at some stage. The politics and stand of the product in the US and India won’t be same. These nuances are often missed. I am hoping that an India-origin CEO would be able to understand these cultural issues better,” said Gogia.
The Hindu Business Line
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