The woman next to Sundar Pichai in this pic from IIT became the CEO of…

A throwback pic of Sundar Pichai from his IIT Kharagpur days (Image credit: @ananyalohani_/X)

A never-seen-before photograph of Google CEO Sundar Pichai from his IIT Kharagpur convocation day is currently going viral on social media. The picture was shared on X by Ananya Lohani, a software engineer whose father was in the same batch at IIT-Kharagpur as Sundar Pichai.

The picture shows Google CEO Sundar Pichai with the only woman in their class - Sharmistha Dubey. Dubey is the India-born American executive who went on to become the CEO of Match Group, which owns several dating apps like Tinder and OkCupid.

“My dad just shared this picture of his IIT KGP convocation (1993) with him, Sundar Pichai and Sharmistha Dubey in the same frame,” Delhi-based software developer Ananya Lohani wrote while sharing the photo on X. “This is absolutely insane…” she added.

My dad just shared this picture of his IIT KGP convocation (1993) with him, Sundar Pichai and Sharmistha Dubey in the same frame.

This is absolutely insane… pic.twitter.com/v9Hup5xhh1

— Ananya Lohani (@ananyalohani_) May 6, 2024

Both Pichai and Dubey were part of the 1993 batch of B.Tech in Metallurgy at IIT Kharagpur. Pichai’s meteoric rise in Silicon Valley is hailed as a success story for Indian immigrants. No less remarkable is the story of his only female classmate at IIT - Sharmistha Dubey, who is credited for reinventing the online dating game.

Dubey served as CEO of Match Group from March 2020 to May 2022. She is the brain behind the ‘Likes You’ feature for Tinder which was introduced in 2017.