Gone are the days when fairness creams used to define Indian women’s potential in the marriage market and the world outside home. While Indian society is progressively rising over its personality disorder caused by deep-rooted obsession with fairness, Indian-origin women have stepped over it to reach new highs in America where actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas was bullied for her brown complexion in her school days.
From UmaSofia Srivastava, the Miss Teen USA 2023 to Chef Aarthi Sampath who made it big in Food Network to Divya Suryadevara, CEO of financial services at UnitedHealth Group to Chef Priyanka Naik who was invited to attend the White House’s Diwali celebration in 2024; they continue to achieve milestones in diverse fields that either test their beauty or brains. Joining the growing cohort of Indian-origin trailblazers is the new CEO of Etsy Inc – Kruti Patel Goyal.
Etsy, a global online marketplace for handmade goods, is offering the top position in its C-suite to Indian American Kruti Patel Goyal for the next chapter of growth and innovation. Come January 2026, she will not only take up the baton from the outgoing CEO but also enter the elite club of Indian-American CEOs. Just a month ago, another India-born business leader, Srini Gopalan occupied the corner office at T-Mobile as CEO.
Who is Kruti Patel Goyal, the next CEO of Etsy Inc?
Armed with prestigious American degrees (from Harvard and Stanford) and years of experience in various leadership roles, Etsy Inc’s new CEO Kruti is a tech-savvy leader from the Gujarati and Marwari communities known for their sharp business acumen. In her career spanning 15 years at Etsy headquarters in New York, she rose through ranks, like Director of Marketplace Integrity, VP Business Development, SVP Product, Chief Product Officer, and President and Chief Growth Officer.
Growing up in north India where textile embroidery is a household art passing through generations, Kruti Patel Goyal shares an umbilical bond with Indian handcraft traditions. Her love for handcrafts across geographies, her upbringing in business communities, her American education, and her innate leadership traits came together to gel her way to the hot seat in the C-suite – of course, through challenges.
However, the ‘CEO’ hat that Kruti is going to don at Etsy – America’s largest online marketplace for independent artisans, creators, and art curators – is not the first to her. For 3 years, she worked as CEO of Depop, a resale fashion marketplace that Etsy acquired for $1.6 billion in 2022. With her strategic thinking, business-critical decisions, and keen understanding of Gen Z consumers, Kruti not just revived Depop; she catapulted it to TIME’s list of 100 most influential companies in 2024.
Why Etsy is Betting on Kruti Patel Goyal as CEO
Depop’s multiplied popularity and Etsy’s slow-paced growth amid current challenges is the driving force behind Kruti’s appointment as CEO of Etsy Inc. Interestingly, her tenure as CEO of Depop was fruitful with a 40% increase in the number of active sellers and active buyers. Her collective experience in product innovation, market expansion, operational strategy, changing consumer behavior, marketplace integrity, and engineering could be a lever for Etsy Inc to accelerate its growth in emerging markets across the globe.
Kruti Patel Goyal’s appointment as Etsy Inc’s CEO in 2026 reinforces the latest study by the Manhattan Institute that says – highly educated, skilled Indian immigrants benefit the US economy with their fiscal contributions that help reduce the national debt over the long term. They do also support the US-India travel ecosystem. Though the Indian immigrant community makes up merely 1.5% of the US population, its direct contribution – $250-300 – to the US economy is an estimated 5-6% of the income tax.
