July 1972 Birth and Parents
Pichai Sundararajan was born to Regunatha Pichai and Lakshmi in Madurai, Tamil Nadu,
India. His father was an electrical engineer at the British conglomerate GEC and managed
a factory that made electrical components. His mother was a stenographer before having children.
January 1980 Background and Family
Pichai grew up in a two-room apartment in Ashok Nagar, Chennai, and hails
from a middle-class Tamil family. He had a humble Hindu upbringing and has one brother.
March 1985 Childhood
Sundar was an active and bright student. He excelled academically at his school,
Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan. He was a sports enthusiast and was the captain
of his school cricket team. He was an avid fan of Football and Cricket.
May 1993 Education
He earned a seat in the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, one of the most
prestigious engineering institutions in India, and did his B. Tech in Metallurgical Engineering.
April 1994 India to America
Pichai got a scholarship to study Materials Science and
Semiconductor Physics at Stanford University for
M.S. His father drained one year’s savings to cover Pichai’s traveling and additional expenses.
April 1998 Career over Academics
He initially planned to pursue a Ph.D. from Stanford and embark on an academic
career. However, he dropped out and joined Applied Materials,
a Silicon Valley semiconductor maker as an engineer and product manager.
May 2002 Navigating Paths
After completing his MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he was appointed
as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. He worked there for a short span of 2 years.
April 2004 Hello Google
Pichai joined Google. Initially, he worked on Google’s search toolbar as a part of a
small team. The toolbar gave users of Internet Explorer and Firefox easy access to Google search.
January 2005 Marriage
Pichai met his classmate Anjali at IIT-Kharagpur and they fell in love with each other during
their college days. They got married after he had a stable life and have two children,
a girl and a boy named Kavya and Kiran.
September 2008 Google Chrome
Pichai convinced the co-founders of Google, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, to launch Google’s
own browser. Pichai played a pivotal role in the ultimate launch of the browser, Google Chrome.
December 2008 Rising the Ladder
Pichai was promoted to Vice President of product development. In this position, he started
appearing more often at Google presentations and continued rising the ranks in Google.
By 2012, he had become the Senior Vice President of Chrome and apps.
May 2012 World’s Best Browser
Pichai became an internationally known figure following the phenomenal success of Chrome and
became the No. 1 browser in the world, surpassing Internet Explorer and Firefox. Chrome also paved
the way for a series of other important products like Chrome OS, Chromebooks, and Chromecast.
March 2013 Managing Android
Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, left to work on a different project.
Larry Page then made Pichai in charge of Android as well.
His influence continued to increase, and he was made the Product Chief in October 2014.
October 2015 Alphabet and Google CEO
Pichai stepped into the new position as Google CEO
after the formation of Alphabet Inc., the new holding company for the Google company family.
He later took up the responsibility of Alphabet too as CEO in 2019.
February 2016 Accumulating Wealth
He was awarded 273,328 shares of Google's holding company Alphabet,
which led to a rise in his net worth. His current net worth is estimated to be $1.3 billionaire.
April 2016 Getting Recognised
Pichai was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2016
and 2020. He is one of the highest-paid CEO in the world and is most sought after. Google
offered him a whopping $50 Million to remain in the leadership when sought by competitors.
August 2017 Right a Wrong
Pichai drew publicity for firing a Google employee who criticized the company's diversity policies
and imparted baseless and unequal moral values. Pichai said to Google employees:
“To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits
that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK."
December 2018 US Congress Testimony
Sundar testified before the U.S. House
Judiciary Committee on issues such as political bias on Google's platforms,
and its privacy practices. He denied the voiding of privacy laws and political bias.
December 2020 Making World Digital
Pichai is focused on delivering the technology to those who are unaided. At Singapore FinTech
Festival he shares, ‘Our goal for the post-COVID world is to ensure the benefits of technology
can be shared, as widely and equitably as possible.’
May 2020 What Future Holds
Pichai is the leader of one of the biggest companies in the world and
is steering it towards growth and the world’s development.
Currently, the company’s goal is to make technology accessible and useful to everyone.
“I grew up without much access to technology. We didn’t get our first telephone til I was
10. I didn’t have regular access to a computer until I came to America for graduate school.
And our television, when we finally got one, only had one channel. So imagine how awestruck
I am today to be speaking to you on a platform that has millions of channels. By contrast,
you grew up with computers of all shapes and sizes. The ability to ask a computer anything,
anywhere—the very thing I’ve spent my last decade working on—is not amazing to you. That’s OK,
it doesn’t make me feel bad, it makes me hopeful! There are probably things about technology that
frustrate you and make you impatient. Don’t lose that impatience. It will create the next
technology revolution and enable you to build things my generation could never dream of.
You may be just as frustrated by my generation's approach to climate change,
or education. Be impatient. It will create the progress the world needs.”