Meet man who topped IIT-JEE exam, was hired for Rs 100 crore, fired soon after, now making headlines for...

Parag Agarwal, an IIT Bombay graduate, gained international attention when he was appointed as Twitter’s CEO. This happened just before Elon Musk’s massive USD 44 billion takeover of the platform.

When he became CEO, Parag was offered a huge compensation package of over Rs 100 crore. This included a base salary of around Rs 8 crore and stock units worth nearly Rs 94 crore.

Parag Agarwal secured an All India Rank of 77 in IIT-JEE and completed his engineering at IIT Bombay in 2005. He then earned a PhD in computer science from Stanford University, with internships at Microsoft Research and Yahoo before joining Twitter in 2011.

Parag climbed the ladder quickly, becoming Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in 2017 after the departure of Adam Messinger. However, his CEO stint was short-lived, and he was removed within a year after Musk’s acquisition.

Despite reports that Parag was to receive a severance payout of around Rs 400 crore, he and other former executives never got the money. They have filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk, alleging unpaid severance totaling more than Rs 1,000 crore.

Parag is now focused on building AI projects and has already raised Rs 249 crore in funding. He comes from a highly educated family — his father worked in the Department of Atomic Energy, and his mother is a retired Economics professor.