Mukesh Ambani ranks 2nd on world’s top CEOs list

Mukesh Ambani has ranked second on the list of world's top CEOs.

Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani has ranked second on Brand Finance’s list of the world’s top CEOs. "Brand Finance's Brand Guardianship Index 2023 saw the rise of Nvidia CEO CEO, Jensen Huang, and Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries Ltd to 1st and 2nd position respectively,” the report said.

The Brand Guardianship Index, released annually by brand valuation consultancy Brand Finance, celebrates CEOs who balance the needs of commercial success with long-term brand building and personal reputation management.

Mukesh Ambani has overtaken the likes of Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Google’s Sundar Pichai to rank first among Indian and Indian-origin CEOs on the Brand Guardianship Index 2023.

“Ambani continues to oversee Reliance’s transition into green energy, and the diversification of its telecoms and retail branches. This commitment to positive change has positively raised his perception as Chairman and Managing Director of the group and is reflected by Ambani’s top performance on the ‘Inspires positive change’ metric within the Brand Guardianship Index,” the report said.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang topped the list of the world’s best CEOs for overseeing the company’s advancement into the next era of computing through focus on artificial intelligence, digital biology, climate sciences, and autonomous vehicles and robotics.

Both Huang and Ambani have overtaken Satya Nadella, who slipped to third place after ranking first in 2022.

The fourth spot on the Brand Guardianship Index 2023 went to Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, while Google CEO Sundar Pichai ranked fifth.

On the sixth place was Punit Renjen, CEO of Deloitte, and Fabrizio Freda of Estee Lauder ranked seventh. The eighth spot on the list of world’s best CEOs went to Natarajan Chandrasekaran of Tata Sons.

Indian chief executives performed well, the report noted, with Mukesh Ambani and N Chandrasekaran finding a spot in the top 10. Overall, 6 CEOs in the top 100 were Indians.

“Furthermore, six of the top ten from the ranking are of Indian origin, 4 of whom are Indian-American (Satya Nadella 3rd, Shantanu Narayen 4th, Sundar Pichai 5th, and Punit Renjen, 6th).This is an impressive performance and underscores the influence that Chief Executives of Indian origin have globally,” the Brand Guardianship Index 2023 said.