List of people from Chennai

The following people were born or based their life in Chennai, formerly known as Madras:

Arts and language

Indra Nooyi, Chairperson & CEO of PepsiCo
Venu Srinivasan, Chairman and Managing Director, TVS Motors Ltd.
Mallika Srinivasan, Chairman and Managing Director, Ammalgamations Group
N. Srinivasan, Chairman and Managing Director, India Cements Ltd.
A. Vellayan, Chairman, Murugappa Group of Companies
M. A. M. Ramaswamy, Chettinad Cements Group of Companies and ex-Pro Chancellor, Annamalai University, Chidambaram.
A. C. Muthiah, former Chairman, Southern Petrochemicals of India Corporation (SPIC) group of companies
Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President of Android, Chrome and Google Apps at Google
Prathap C. Reddy, Chairman, Apollo Hospitals
Bhargav Sri Prakash, founder & CEO of FriendsLearn, entrepreneur and hedge fund manager
Naveen Selvadurai, Co-founder of Foursquare

Ramayya Krishnan, Dean of Heinz College and H. John Heinz III, W. W. Cooper and Ruth F. Cooper Professor of Management science and Information systems at Carnegie Mellon University

Ashok Amritraj, Hollywood producer
Padma Lakshmi, Cookbook author, actress, model and television host
Ajith Kumar, Thespian and Racer
M. G. Ramachandran, Actor, politician, producer, director
A. R. Rahman (born 1966), music composer and Academy Award Winner
Ilayathalapathy Vijay, Thespian
Kamal Haasan, Thespian
Ilaiyaraja, Indian music composer and Symphonic Maestro
Shivaji Ganesan, actor and the first International Award winner of India
Yuvan Shankar Raja, First Cypress-International-Award Winning Creative music Composer
Vijay Yesudas (born 1979), Playback Singer
Pete Best (born 1941), early Beatles drummer
Engelbert Humperdinck (born 1936), pop singer
Mani Ratnam (born 1956), film director
Rajinikanth (born 1950), Thespian
Priya Anand, actress
Shruthi Hassan, actress
Samantha Ruth Prabhu, actress
Trisha, actress
Arvind Swamy, actor and businessman
Diwakar, a playback singer and title winner of the Airtel Super Singer in 2014.

Viswanathan Anand (born 1969), chess grandmaster and the undisputed world chess champion from 2007 until 2013

Dipika Pallikal (born 1991), squash player, WISPA titles and first Indian woman to break into the top 10 in the WSA rankings
Joshna Chinappa (born 1986), squash player, British Squash Championship