Ajay Banga, the former Mastercard executive chairman, is the first Indian-American to take charge of the World Bank. His five-year term as the President of the international financial institution will begin from June 2, 2023.
Ajay Banga was nominated to become the World Bank president by US President Joe Biden in February. Banga will succeed the outgoing David Malpass on June 2.
Ajay Banga was born in the Khadki cantonment of Pune in 1959. His father Harbhajan Singh Banga was a retired Lieutenant-General who served in the Indian Army.
Ajay Banga did his schooling from St Edward’s School in Shimla and Hyderabad Public School. He then went onto complete his graduation from St Stephen’s College in Delhi, followed by a PGP in Management from IIM-A.
Ajay Banga’s elder brother Manvinder ‘Vindi’ Singh Banga has served as the chairman and executive of Hindustan Unilever. Vindi worked in HUL for over 3 decades.
He began his career as a management trainee with the FMCG giant Nestle in 1981 and worked in jobs across sales, marketing and general management in his 13 years at the company.
After his stint at Nestle came to an end, Banga joined PepsiCo and was involved in the launch of its international fast food franchises Pizza Hut and KFC in India when the economy got rid of the 'License Raj'.
Ajay Banga moved from the position of the Chief Operating Officer (COO) to the CEO in his much-talked about stint at Mastercard, which has over 24,000 employees at present.
Ajay Banga became the CEO of Citigroup’s Asia-Pacific business in 2008, 12 years after he joined the multinational investment bank. He received compensation worth $10 million in 2008 from Citigroup, thus, becoming one of Citigroup’s highest paid executives at the time.
Under Banga’s leadership, Mastercard's revenues tripled, net income increased sixfold, and market capitalisation went from $30 billion to over $300 billion.
Ajay Banga got India’s fourth highest civilian honour Padma Shri in 2016 for his contributions in the fields of trade and industry.