Sundar Pichai turns 51: From IIT Kharagpur to Google CEO

The journey of Sundar Pichai from Madurai in Tamil Nadu to becoming Google CEO has been nothing short of inspiring.

In its 75-year independent history, India have had several personalities who have made a name for themselves and made the country proud on the global stage. One such personality in the Information Technology sector is Sundar Pichai, who turns 51 on Saturday.

Pichai was born in Madurai in Tamil Nadu on June 10, 1972 and grew up in modest surroundings. His father-Reghunatha Pichai- worked as an electrical engineer in GEC while his mother- Lakshmi Pichai- was a stenographer.

Pichai had revealed a few years ago that he and his family would sleep on the living room floor of their house.

"We would sleep on the living room floor. There was a drought when I was growing up, and we had anxiety. Even now, I can never sleep without a bottle of water beside my bed," Pichai had told The New York Times in an old interview.

Pichai graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kharagpur in metallurgical engineering and later relocated to the United States to pursue his masters in materials science and engineering from Stanford University.

Later, he went to Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to pursue an MBA. Pichai was named  Siebel Scholar and a Palmer Scholar, respectively at the university.

Pichai worked in the at McKinsey & Company for a short time before joining Google in 2004.

At Google, Pichai led the product management and innovation aspects for several products such as Chrome and Chrome OS. He also had a key role to play in the development of Google Drive.

Pichai went on to oversee the development of several new products such as Google Maps and in 2013, he added to Android to the list of products managed by him.

In August 2015, Pichai was appointed the CEO of Google. Interestingly, in 2014, Pichai was looked at as a contender to takeover as the CEO of Microsoft- a position which eventually went to Satya Nadella.

Four years after becoming Google CEO, Pichai was appointed as CEO of Alphabet Inc. In 2022, he was awarded India's third-highest civilian award- Padma Bhushan.

AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER

Away from work, Pichai is married to Anjali Pichai, who works as Business Operations Manager at Intuit, as per her LinkedIn profile. The couple are parents to two children- son named Kiran and daughter named Kavya.

Pichai is a keen follower of cricket and football and supports FC Barcelona in the latter.

In May 2023, Pichai's childhood home in Chennai was sold.

Also read: Upgrad called out for using Sundar Pichai’s likeness in ad campaign