Sundar Pichai – Google it
- Sundar Pichai grew up in a modest two-room home in Chennai, India
- His parents didn’t have a phone, let alone a computer, until he was 12
- Was so devoted to academics many cannot remember him as a youngster
- Studious Pichai worked his way up and won a scholarship to Standford
- Joined Google in 2004 and was later the man who developed Google Chrome – beginning the quietly spoken Pichai’s meteoric rise to the top
Very few people outside of the technology bubble had ever heard of Sundar Pichai until he was suddenly announced as Google‘s new CEO.
Perhaps that’s not surprising: very few people had heard of the quiet and studious Pichai in Chennai, India, where he grew up. As one former teacher dryly noted, it was only the naughty ones who tended to stand out – and Pichai was anything but. Yet it seems certain everyone in the southern Indian town will now be speaking of little else than the man now in control of one of the world’s most important companies – the hero of his own rags-to-riches story.
Kumar Sankaralingam, who has lived next door to the Pichais for almost 40 years, said: ‘He’s an amazing person. He is very shy, but opinionated. He has an opinion on everything.
‘I never believed he’d become the CEO of Google. It’s a miracle for both him and us (community). We’re very proud of him.’ It seems anyone connected to Pichai is keen to play up their link to the man who’s behind the success of Google Chrome, Android and Google apps.
And that’s not surprising when a sixth of the world use Chrome, while more than a billion devices were sent out with Android as their operating system last year alone, with 40,000 Google searches carried out every second.
Pichai, the shy boy from Chennai, is now arguably one of the most powerful men on the planet.
His life in San Francisco, where he lives with his wife and two children, is certainly a world away from the modest two room apartment where he grew up. He might now be worth an estimated $150million (£96million), but in the 70s and 80s, Pichai would sleep in the living room with his younger brother. The family, while middle class, were not well off: they scrimped and saved for three years to buy a blue Lambretta scooter, which they would all pile onto for outings together.
‘They’re a humble family, a typical middle class family. His father earned around Rs 3000 (£30) a month but that was sufficient in those days. His father was an engineer and his role model,’ said Sankaralingam.
It was his father Regunatha who first piqued Pichai’s interest in technology.
It certainly wasn’t a home filled the latest technological advances: Pichai was 12, in the mid-80s, when the family got their first phone.
It was through the phone that Pichai discovered a special talent – a photographic memory for numbers.
Speaking to India’s Economic Times, his uncle S Raman told of his nephew’s ability to remember telephone numbers
‘During a conversation, a family friend gave me his phone number. I asked my wife to write it down but she forgot. After some months, I asked Sundar about the number, and he reeled it out instantly.’
Despite this amazing recall, Pichai, who was unimpressed with this new talent, saying he didn’t see how it was ‘useful’, was not at the top of the class.
‘He was a brilliant student but his geography and history used to let him down so he was never top of the year. He was always around number four,’ Sankaralingam revealed.
Another classmate told The Hindu: ‘The only thing I remember is that he and Shankar Subramanian used to compete for the highest marks in science.’
The newspaper goes onto note that Subramanian is currently on an exchange at Google.
But Pichai, a bookworm who loved science quizzes and puzzles, was entirely devoted to his studies, rejecting offers to play outside in favour of more educational pursuits – which may explain one former schoolmate’s stark assessment that ‘he had no friends’.
Sankaralingam said: ‘Growing up he never came out to play, he was always studying.
‘Sundar used to go to school in a cycle rickshaw every morning and afternoon. But as soon as he got on he’d pull out a book and read until he reached school. He didn’t even look at the girls sitting next to him.’
However, all that changed when he met his future wife, Anjali while they studied engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT KGP).
Although, when it came to women and his approach to Anjali, Pichai’s approach was as awkward as ever.
‘Today, now he has become the world’s most sought after CEO, I was tempted to tell friends this was easier achieved than expressing his feelings for Anjali,’ joked university friend Phani Bhushan in The Times of India.
It was at university that peers speak fondly of the boy who still loved to study, but liked to ‘gossip’.
And, unlike at school, at university he was top of the class. He was ‘head and shoulders’ above everyone else – and went on to win a scholarship at Stanford, one of the top universities in the world.
Yet simply getting there was difficult. His parents, who had always ensured their two boys got the best education they could afford, ended up withdrawing £1,000 – more than Regunatha earned in a year – to put him on the plane.
Speaking to Bloomberg last year, Pichai said: ‘My dad and mom did what a lot of parents did at the time.
‘They sacrificed a lot of their life and used a lot of their disposable income to make sure their children were educated.’
His stellar educational career continued on the up – but there was one thing missing.
Pichai, shocked at the high price of goods in the States, was also missing Anjali terribly, so she joined him in the US.
He got he got an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and he had a short career in consultancy before getting his: an interview at Google in 2004.
It fell on April 1, the same day the internet giant launched Gmail and Pichai thought it was a joke.
That faux pas didn’t harm his long-term chances and he worked his way up the ranks in a small team working on the Google tool bar.
Then, in a move which propelled him into the spotlight – and convinced reluctant former CEO Eric Schmidt that Google needed its own browser.
It was Pichai’s defining moment: Since its launch in 2008, Chrome has become the world’s dominant browser and Pichai was tasked with overseeing apps like Gmail. He later became head of Android, Google’s mobile-phone operating system.
Meanwhile, he and Anjali had had two children – a girl and then a little boy.
The possibility of a move to Twitter saw Pichai awarded millions of dollars of Google stocks to make him stay. He continued his steady climb to the top, being made vice-president and then on Monday the boy who took a rickshaw to school became CEO.
‘I had seen this coming,’ his thrilled professor Sanat Roy told the Times of India.
‘Three years ago when the boy became Google’s vice president, didn’t I tell you this is the beginning, he’ll make it straight to the top?’
His family are also unsurprised by his rise to the top.
Sundar’s uncle Vasudeven Pichai, 65, who is a retired government official and lives next door to the family home with his 90-year-old mother Ranganayaki, told MailOnline: ‘We always knew he would become a big man and we’re extremely proud of his achievements.
‘He deserves it as he’s always been a very hard worker and intelligent.’
But Pichai has not forgotten the sacrifices his parents made for him, buying them a luxurious flat in Chennai.
However, Regunatha and wife Lakshmi – who spend half the year in America with their eldest – are said to prefer the simple life, and can still be found for six months of the year in the modest two-room apartment where they raised the CEO of Google.
Ref: Daily Mail UK
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