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When we hear about the Indian CEOs names or achievements we often get Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai or Microsoft’s Satya Nadella’s name. But there is one more Indian CEOs who is in the top list of earning salaries in the whole world. Nikesh Arora the CEO of Palo Alto Networks is one of the highest-paid CEOs in the world. His salary was more than Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai. In 2023 he was at second place in the list of highest-paid CEOs. According to The Wall Street Journal Nikesh Arora earned $151.43 million in 2023. This salary was higher than Mark Zuckerberg’s $24.40 million and Pichai’s $8.8 million.  He was born in Ghaziabad Uttar Pradesh and grew up in a  simple household. His father was in the Indian Air Force so his family had to relocate many times. He took education from the Air Force School and did engineering from IIT-BHU. In 1990 he decided to go to the United States for higher education despite financial problems at home. He had only $100 (around Rs 1700) in his pocket. But this didn’t stop him. He applied for universities that waived application fees. Northeastern University in Boston gave him a scholarship where he also got the opportunity to teach computer science. After graduation Arora faced tough competition in the job market he recieved rejection letters from over 400 companies. He kept those rejection letters as a source of motivation. In 1992 he secured his first job at Fidelity Investments. He started in an entry-level role and became Vice President of Fidelity Technologies. During this time he also earned a Master’s degree in Finance and a CFA certification. In 2004 Nikesh Arora joined Google just months after its IPO. Over the next decade he played a huge role in increasing Google’s revenue from $2 billion to $60 billion. But  he left Google in 2014 in search of a new challenge. Joining SoftBank  Arora joined SoftBank as President and COO where he learnt about sound investments. He decided against investing in WeWork and in 2016 he resigned from SoftBank when CEO Masayoshi Son postponed his retirement. In 2018 Nikesh Arora became the CEO of Palo Alto Networks a cybersecurity company valued at $18 billion at the time. Under his leadership the company’s valuation went over $100 billion. He focused on cloud security and artificial intelligence. He also acquired or partnered with companies that didn’t have internal growth capabilities.