IIT Bombay alumnus Parag Agrawal succeeds Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO

IIT Bombay alumnus and Twitter’s erstwhile Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal on Monday took over as the company’s CEO. 

Twitterstock jumped over 11 percent on NASDAQ to touch the day's high of $52.27 apiece against its previous close of $47.07.

Twitter Founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey announced his resignation from the role, 16 years after founding the micro-blogging site in a company-wide email. His one wish for Twitter is to be the most transparent company in the world.

After years of working hard to ensure that the company is not founder-led, which can be “severely limiting and a single point of failure,” Jack penned down three reasons why he believed now was the right time for him to step down — and the first reason he said is Parag.

“The first is Parag becoming our CEO,” he wrote, adding, “Parag has been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around. He's curious, probing, rational, creative, demanding, self-aware, and humble. He leads with heart and soul, and is someone I learn from daily. My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep.” 

Parag had embarked on his professional journey at Twitter a decade ago as an ads engineer. In 2018, he was appointed as CTO and oversaw the social media company’s technical strategy with a focus on AI/ML across Twitter’s infrastructure and product teams.

ALSO READ

From Google to Twitter, meet the Indian CEOs of the US tech companies

Parag reverted to the same mail, expressing his gratitude for Jack’s continued friendship and mentorship. In what seems like a rather public passing-of-the-baton, both Jack and Parag have tweeted screenshots of their messages to the team and each other.

Parag shared the company has recently updated to “a bold and right” strategy to hit ambitious goals and that the critical challenge ahead lies in execution. Twitter plans to hold an all-hands meeting on Tuesday with time for Q&A and discussion.

The founder further stated that stepping down was a tough decision and he owns it. “I'm really sad...yet really happy. There aren't many companies that get to this level. And there aren't many founders that choose their company over their own ego. I know we'll prove this was the right move,” he wrote, marking a bittersweet moment for Twitter.