Hotshot Silicon Valley CEO with $26 million salary still visits India regularly because…
HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan explains why she and her husband visit India regulalry along with their sons.
HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan, born and raised in South India, has now spent decades in the United States. However, Rangan still makes it a point to visit India regularly so her teenaged sons can stay in touch with their roots.
The Indian-American CEO of HubSpot recently sat down for a chat with Kleiner Perkins for his Grit Podcast, where she opened up about her “middle class” upbringing in India and her vastly different life in the US.
From India to Silicon Valley
San Francisco-based Yamini Rangan today sits at the helm of a $34 billion software company and draws a staggering salary of nearly $26 million. But her life was not always this cushy.
Speaking on the Grit Podcast, the Indian-origin executive revealed that she grew up in a 350 square foot house, which she described as “super small.” Asked if her family had money growing up, her answer was an emphatic “Not at all.”
“Our home that we spent most of our childhood in was about 350 square feet. Now I can go back and say ‘Oh, that was pretty modest’ and we were squarely middle class,” she said.
Rangan revealed that her father ran a small business and her mother was a homemaker - “they did everything possible for us, and we had no desires beyond what we got, but it was a small house,” she revealed.
On visiting India regularly
Having spent decades in the United States, Rangan and her husband still make it a point to visit India regularly.
“Do you ever go back to India?” Perkins asked the CEO, who replied: “Yeah, maybe once every couple of years.” Rangan said that one of the reasons she visits India is so that her three sons can acknowledge and understand their privilege.
“I now have teen boys and the only way to get them to understand where we came from and have a sense of grounding in the world is to take them back and make them experience what I experienced,” she explained.
“It's always tough because they can't relate - they've only seen everything here. And then I'm like, ‘You know what, you've got it good’. They don't get what that is like unless I take them to go visit,” said Rangan.
The CEO of HubSpot revealed that her family also sponsors an orphanage in the place where she grew up.
“I make them [my sons] go and spend days there, because you know it actually gives them a sense of ‘Look where you are and what your responsibility is in society’. It is not just for you to make money and live in the Bay Area,” she added.
