When people talk about the richest Indian-origin leaders in global tech, names like Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai usually come up first. Both run some of the world’s biggest companies and are among the most recognisable faces of Silicon Valley. But when it comes to net worth, neither of them tops the list anymore. According to the Hurun India Rich List 2025, the richest Indian professional manager today is the CEO and chairperson of Artista Networks, Jayshree Ullal.
Meet Jayshree Ullal- Richest Indian professional manager
The latest Hurun India Rich List places Jayshree Ullal at the very top among Indian professional managers, with a jaw-dropping net worth of ₹50,170 crore. That figure puts her far ahead of many well-known global CEOs.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella ranks second with a net worth of ₹9,770 crore, while Google CEO Sundar Pichai comes in seventh at ₹5,810 crore. Other names on the list include Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, PepsiCo’s former chief Indra Nooyi, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, and Berkshire Hathaway’s Ajit Jain.
Jayshree Ullal- journey to the top
Jayshree Ullal is the president and CEO of Arista Networks, a US-based computer networking company that has become a key player in cloud and data centre technology. She has been leading the company since 2008.
Arista Networks saw its value rise over the years, and in 2024 alone, the company recorded revenue of about $7 billion, nearly 20 percent higher than the previous year, according to Forbes. Ullal owns around 3 percent of Arista’s stock, which forms the biggest part of her personal wealth.
Hurun, while releasing the list, said Ullal’s rise shows the massive scale of wealth creation in global technology companies, especially those built around cloud networking.
A tech boss shaped by India and Silicon Valley
Though she is now based in San Francisco, Ullal’s story has strong Indian roots. She was born in London on March 27, 1961, into a Hindu family of Indian origin, but she grew up in New Delhi and completed her schooling there at the Convent of Jesus and Mary.
Her education later took her to the United States, where she received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from San Francisco State University. She went on to complete her master’s degree in engineering management and leadership from Santa Clara University.
Ullal began her career in the semiconductor world. She worked at Fairchild Semiconductor and later at Advanced Micro Devices, where she designed high-speed memory chips for companies like IBM and Hitachi.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she moved into networking and joined Ungermann-Bass and later Crescendo Communications. At Crescendo, she worked on early Ethernet switching technologies.
Her career took a major turn in 1993 when Cisco Systems acquired Crescendo Communications. That acquisition brought Ullal into Cisco. She was offered a crucial role in building the company’s switching business from scratch.
Ullal spent more than 15 years at Cisco. She helped grow the Catalyst switching business into a $5 billion operation by 2000. Over time, she rose to become senior vice president of Cisco’s data centre. The businesses under her leadership generated nearly $15 billion in direct and indirect revenue.
Building Arista into a global tech powerhouse
In 2008, Arista Networks’ founders Andy Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton appointed her as president and CEO of the company. Under her leadership, Arista became one of Silicon Valley’s most successful networking firms. In 2014, she led the company to a public listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ANET.
Forbes has named her among the most influential people in the networking industry. She has also featured on Barron’s list of the world’s best CEOs and Fortune’s list of top global business leaders.
