Who is Neeraj Arora? The man rumoured to be the next WhatsApp CEO

If reports are to be believed, another Indian could be at the helm of a major technology firm. After the exit of Jan Koum as WhatsApp CEO, company’s "all things business guy" Neeraj Arora, a former Googler is considered for the top job.

TechCrunch in a report said, “one possible candidate for the CEO role would be WhatsApp business executive Neeraj Arora, a former Google corporate development manager who’s been with WhatsApp since 2011 — well before the Facebook acquisition.”

Arora, who is an IIT-D and Indian School of Business alumnus, if promoted to the top job at the messaging service provider, will be in the league of Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen—other Indian origin CEOs who are leading their respective companies in the technology market.

Arora began his career with Accellion, a cloud solutions company in 2000, soon after graduating from IIT. He was one of the earliest engineers at the company, building pieces of the core technology.

After graduating from ISB with an MBA in Finance and Strategy in 2006, Arora worked for Times Internet Limited for 18 months.

In 2007, he left for Google and handled acquisitions and strategic investments across products and geographies for the global giant. According to his LinkedIn profile, Arora was instrumental in acquisitions of Zagat, Dailydeal.de, Slide, Picnik, Cleversense, PittPatt and Talkbin.

Arora has been associated with WhatsApp for last seven years and according to one of the TechCrunch sources, is considered #4 person at WhatsApp. He has also served as a board member for Paytm.

Recently, WhatsApp put up an advertisement about a job position 'Head of India' for product strategy. The position based in Mumbai with the WhatsApp partnerships team will report directly to the Facebook-owned instant messaging giant’s Chief Operating Officer in California.