India's Leading Export: CEOs

Multicultural and resource-short, the subcontinent may be the ideal training ground for global bosses

Mastercard / Ramin Talaie / Corbis

India's Leading Export: CEOs

What on earth did the Banga brothers' mother feed them for breakfast? Whatever it was, it worked: Vindi Banga grew up to become a top executive at the food-and-personal-care giant Unilever, then a partner at the private-equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. His younger brother Ajay, after heading Citigroup's Asian operations, was named CEO of MasterCard last year--all without a degree from a Western business school and without abandoning his Sikh turban. When Ajay took over at the credit-card company's headquarters in a suburb outside New York City, the Times of India crowed that he was the first "entirely India-minted executive"...

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