Silicon Valley is all set to welcome yet another chief executive of Indian origin later this year. The man making headlines today is Anil Chakravarthy, whose journey as an “experienced transformational leader” began at the Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) Varanasi.
He secured his Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT, Varanasi, India, before moving to America, some three years after John Warnock and Charles Geschke sparked the desktop publishing revolution by founding Adobe Inc in 1982. The Indian-born techie joined the company nearly seven years ago.
The IIT alum has now been confirmed as the new chief executive of the Photoshop maker as Adobe’s leadership undergoes reshuffling while fears of AI takeover consume the global tech industry. Chakravarthy’s formal appointment comes months after Adobe laid out longtime CEO Shantanu Narayen’s plan to step down after finding his successor.
The outgoing chief’s 18-year tenure has been crucial to transforming its flagship products into household names. The list spans tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and InDesign.
Another Indian-origin leader takes the helm at Adobe
On Thursday (US time), Adobe, the California-based computer software company best known for creating the PDF format, officially named insider Anil Chakravarthy as its next president and CEO. He will succeed fellow Indian-origin tech leader CEO Shantanu Narayen and take the helm on December 1, 2026, in addition to joining Adobe’s Board of Directors.
Hyderabad-native Narayen, who joined the company in 1998 and served as Adobe’s chief for nearly two decades, will next take on the role of executive chair. Meanwhile, Chakravarthy’s promotion to the top leadership post comes over six years after he joined Adobe in January 2020. As both Indian-origin Adobe executives undergo crucial transition processes into new roles, they will “work closely” to ensure a seamless handover of responsibilities, while the company enters a new era.
Currently, Anil Chakravarthy serves as the president of Adobe’s Customer Experience Orchestration business and worldwide field operations. Once he takes the helm in December, Chakravarthy will lead the company’s growth in an artificial intelligence-driven era, having already helped Adobe become an industry leader in Customer Experience Orchestration solutions.
As certain software firms in the US are viewed as vulnerable targets of the AI boom, Adobe is also doing its best to reassure apprehensive investors about disruptions that the advancing technology could trigger. The Photoshop maker’s shares have declined around 18% in 2026 so far after falling over 21% in 2025, according to Reuters.
However, not all is bad. The company also boosted its annual profit forecast just months ago, signalling a rising demand for its AI products and tools over rivals like Canva and Figma.
Who was in the running for the new Adobe CEO post?
Back in June, a Bloomberg report relied on people with knowledge of the process to spread the word that Adobe Inc was eyeing two internal candidates as Narayen’s potential successor. The report also indicated that the PDF-creator had hired a renowned search firm in its quest to single out outsiders who could run the company in an AI-first world.
That same month, Adobe even announced its finance chief Dan Durn’s departure.
Thursday’s announcement has since proved that internal leaders prevailed in the end, but Anil Chakravarthy wasn’t the only one in the running for the CEO job. David Wadhwani, yet another top Adobe executive, had also emerged as a front-running contender for the role.
However, as Chakravarthy secured the top position, Wadhwani, who served as the president of Adobe’s creativity and productivity business for nearly five years, announced his exit from the company the same day, as he prepares to start a “New Journey.”
“As much as Adobe means to me, I’ve decided this is the right moment for me to start a new chapter, and it’s a great moment for Adobe to do the same as Anil steps into the CEO role,” Wadhwani wrote on LinkedIn. “I’ve had the privilege to work alongside Anil the last few years and I leave confident in where he’ll take Adobe.”
Anil Chakravarthy’s journey before Adobe
As Chakvarthy excitedly accepted the honour of stepping into his new role as Adobe prepared to bid farewell to the Shantanu Narayen-led era, he proudly declared on LinkedIn: “Adobe’s best days are ahead!”
Even as the current leader of Adobe’s marketing and analytics software business, Anil Chakravarthy has helped the company rake in billions of dollars. In FY25, his department generated $5.9 billion in sales, accounting for about a quarter of Adobe’s total, according to Bloomberg.
Speaking on the tech podcast TBPIN in April, he said that Adobe will manage to assuage sceptics on Wall Street as long as the company continues its streak of boosting its revenue in the double-digits with healthy margins.
He joined Adobe in January 2020 as executive vice president and general manager leading the Digital Experience business. Merely months later, he took on the additional responsibility of leading the firm’s worldwide field operations serving enterprise customers with the full portfolio of Adobe’s products, including creativity and productivity, according to the San Jose-headquartered company’s press release. He was ultimately promoted to president of Digital Experience and worldwide field operations in December 2021.
The IIT Varanasi alum started his journey at Adobe nearly seven years ago. However, his path first aligned with the software firm and Shantanu Narayen through its partnership with Informatica, an enterprise data management company he was the CEO of before joining Adobe, according to an interview with CNBC in 2021.
“A lot of the reason I came was the opportunity to work with him and work with the leadership team at Adobe,” Chakravarthy told CNBC at the time.
The Indian-origin tech leader worked at Informatica almost as long as he has so far been attached to Adobe. Joining the company as an executive VP and chief product officer in September 2013, he eventually climbed the ranks to become the Redwood City-based firm’s CEO in August 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile. It further details that as the chief executive, he degfined the strategy for the next phase of the company’s growth–a goal he now hopes to achieve at Adobe as well after he takes over in December 2026.
His other professional achievements include acquiring broad experience in the tech world and executive credits at prior workplaces Symantec, VeriSign, and McKinsey & Company. Beyond that, he serves on the board at Fidelity Information Services (FIS), having also previously served on the boards of Ansys, Inc, and USAA Bank.
His career’s trajectory managed to take the shape it did, all thanks to the choices he made during his years of higher education. After getting his B.Tech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT, Varanasi, India, he went on to pursue a Master of Science and PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.