Today, June 10 is Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s 50th birthday. His has been the journey of a middle-class boy from Chennai who once upon a time could not even afford his air tickets to the US as he pursued his further studies in Stamford, to now become one of India’s most celebrated sons, through sheer handwork and of course his innate abilities! So it is an opportune time to look at some facts from Pichai’s life- his background, education, family, career and some tidbits.
Pichai was born on this day, June 10, 1972 in Madurai, and did most of his schooling in Chennai, first from Jawahar Vidyalaya Senior Secondary school, and then passing out from Vana Vani School inside the IIT Madras campus.
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He earned his Bachelors in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur with distinction, before going on to pursue his M.S. in Material Sciences and Engineering from Stanford University, where he was a Siebel scholar. He then pursued his MBA from the Wharton school of the University of Pennsylvania where he was a Palmer scholar. Clearly he knew his way to the top!
Pichai started off as an engineer doing product management at Applied Materials before shifting paths- into management consulting at McKinsey & Company.
In 2004 Google came calling. Pichai joined the company to lead the product management and innovation efforts and some of his big products that he oversaw include Google Chrome, Chrome OS and he was also largely incharge of the development of Google Drive. His fingerprints are also all over the development of Android, which took over the world by storm in the early 2010s.
On 10 August 2015, Sundar Pichai was chosen as the next CEO of Google Inc, after he had previously been appointed Product Chief by CEO Larry Page, and he took over on 24 October 2015. The company has thrived under his leadership and he has pushed for a more diverse inclusive culture all across Google. In 2019 he became the CEO of Alphabet Inc which is the parent/holding company of Google.
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The Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, which is the third highest civilian award in the country. Also, Sundar Pichai was included in the Time’s annual list of the 100 most influential people, both in 2016 as well as in 2020.
Sundar Pichai is married to Anjali Pichai, who was his classmate in IIT Kharagpur, and the two have been blessed with two children.
Pichai is a diehard fan of both cricket and football. During a speech in Chennai, he told the audience how much he admired Sachin Tendulkar and Sunil Gavaskar. In the footballing space, Pichai is allegiances lie with Barcelona, and he’s often found gushing about the genius of Lionel Messi who is a Barcelona legend. In fact in 2017, the Catalan even invited Pichai to their iconic home stadium- the Camp Nou.
