Most Indian CEOs Are Inaccessible, Social Media Shy: Report

An international study by ECCO International has found that showed that 58% of global CEOs were active on LinkedIn, compared to only 20% of Indian CEOs. At the same time, for Twitter, the global average was 17% and 10% for India.

The study said that most chief executives in India remain relatively inaccessible to consumers on social media as compared to their counterparts in Europe and the United States.

Apple CEO Tim Cook Leads On Twitter

The study examined the top 30 companies by market capitalisation in each country. It was first conducted in 2017 and showed that CEOs in the US had by far the most number of followers online, despite the country ranking fifth in terms of total presence on social media.

The most popular CEO on Twitter is Apple CEO Tim Cook with more than 11 Mn followers, an increase of 120% over 2017. On LinkedIn, Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, leads the way with over 6 Mn followers, an increase of 300% over 2017.

Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, CEO of Telefonica, Spain, is the most active CEO on Twitter and has published over 36K tweets since 2010. CEOs in France were the most active on social media, followed by those in Denmark. Australia and the Netherlands shared the third position.

Indian CEOs With Most Social Media Followers

From India, Uday Kotak, CEO, Kotak Mahindra Bank, was rated as one of the leading CEOs globally on social media with nearly 1Mn followers on Twitter.

Bhavya Doshi, assistant vice president, ECCO in India, said, “More and more CEOs are active worldwide on the LinkedIn career network and in almost all countries Most CEOs continue to shy away from communication on Twitter, as the language is often more pointed on this platform and hence the risk of backlash from consumers is significantly higher. With LinkedIn, this risk is lower and [so], more CEOs are recognising opportunities on this channel.’’

However, due to the study considering only the top 30 companies, several Indian CEOs who are active missed making it to the charts.

Some notable business leaders in India with large Twitter following include Ratan Tata (7.65 Mn); Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group (7.2 Mn); Nandan Nilekani, Infosys (2.52 Mn); Ronnie Screwvala (2.13 Mn); Harsh Goenka, chairman, RPG Group (1.53 Mn); Kunal Bahl, founder, Snapdeal (249K); Sachin Bansal, cofounder, Flipkart and BAC Acquisitions (179K) and Kunal Shah, founder, FreeCharge and CRED (148K).

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