Rajat Gupta - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Rajat Gupta was born in Kolkata, India to Pran Kumari Gupta and Ashwini Kumar Gupta. His father was a journalist for Ananda Publishers. His father was a prominent freedom fighter and had been jailed by the British for his efforts. His mother taught at a Montessori school. Gupta has three siblings.

When Gupta was five the family moved to New Delhi, where his father went to start the newspaper Hindustan Standard. Gupta's father died when Gupta was sixteen; Gupta's mother died two years later. Now an orphan, Gupta and his siblings "decided to live by ourselves. It was pretty unusual in those days."

He was a student at Modern School in New Delhi. After high school, Gupta ranked 15th in the nation in the entrance exam for the Indian Institutes of Technology, IIT JEE. He received a Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-Delhi) in 1971. Declining a job from the prestigious domestic firm ITC Limited, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School (HBS) in 1973, where he was named a Baker Scholar. Gupta remarked that the first time he saw an airplane was when he flew to ITC to inform them he would be attending HBS.