Essay : Sundar Pichai - An Inspiring Story of an Indian Techie

Sundar Pichai - An Inspiring Story of an Indian Techie

Overview

• Early childhood and family background. 
• Educational background. 
• Started career in Google in 2004. 
• Playing vital role in launching 'Google Chrome' 
• His easy and focussed outlook and excellent performance in developing all Google products. 
• Appointment as the CEO of Google. 
• Great team leader, achieved success with passion, determination and motivation.

"I have a secret project which adds four hours every day to the 24 hours we have. There's a bit of time travel involved."

Sundar Pichai is an Indian-American business executive and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Google Inc. He was born on 12th July, 1972 in Madurai, Tamil Nadu in a Tamil Brahmin family. His father, Regunatha Pichai worked as a senior electric engineer in General Electrics and managed a factory that made electrical components and his mother was a stenographer before his birth. He belonged to a middle class family.

He completed his schooling from Chennai and earned his bachelor's degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in Metallurgical Engineering. After graduation, he pursued MS from Stanford University in Material Sciences and Engineering and MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennyslvania.

He was named as Siebel Scholar and Palmer Scholar in Stanford University and Wharton School respectively. After completing his MBA in 2002, he planned to pursue PhD from Stanford University but dropped out and joined Applied Materials as an engineer and product manager for a brief period. He, then moved to work with McKinsey & Company as a management consultant.

In April 2004, he was interviewed and selected by Google. Initially, he worked on Google's search toolbar which could give an easy access and direct the users of Internet Explorer and Firefox to the Google search engine. Pichai's hardwork on Google's search toolbar came into limelight when Microsoft changed their default search engine from `Google' to 'Bing' in 2006. Though, it was not easy, but Pichai was successful in convincing computer manufacturers to pre-install the Google toolbar to mitigate the effect of the change implied by Microsoft. The success of the Google toolbar brought him the idea of developing his own browser. After facing objection by then CEO, Eric Schmidt, he persevered and convinced the co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin to launch his own browser. Pichai played a vital role in the launch of Google's Browser 'Google Chrome' in 2008. Pichai became a widely known household name after the great success of Chrome. This development and achievement paved a way to success for him. Pichai was promoted to serve as the Vice-President of Product Development Division in 2008 and by 2012, he had become the Senior Vice-President of Chrome and apps.

As a leader, Pichai has always been well liked for his easy and focussed outlook of others. With more responsibility piled up on his shoulders he took over the Android Division in 2013 when the former head of the department, Andy Rubin left the team. Sundar gave in his best to make Android most compatible with Google products.

Pichai's excellence and performance with Chrome, apps and android led him to be the incharge of almost all the Google products such as Google Chrome, Chrome OS, Goolge Gear and Packs, Gmail, Google, drive etc and areas like search, maps, Google+, commerce and ads and infrastructure.

He had by then achieved very important role in Google. Despite of high ranked offers from Twitter, Pichai stuck its loyalty to Google.

Late in October 2014, he was made the product chief because of his involvement and influence he continued to hold on Google. With the reorganisation of the company `Google' where a new holding company Alphabet Inc was formed to act as a parent company. Google put its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey incharge of it.

This brought Sundar Pichai to fill in the void with his substance and excellence, and thus he was appointed as the CEO of Google, on 12th October, 2015. Google's co-founder Larry Page respects Pichai on a high note, "Sundar has a tremendous ability to see what's ahead and mobilise teams around the super important stuff" Larry wrote in a memo announcing Pichai's promotion, "We very much see eye-to-eye when it comes to product, which makes him the perfect fit for this role."

In February 2016, Pichai was awarded with 2-7 million shares of Googles holding company, Alphabet worth $199 million. This awarded possession took up his stakeholdings to a net of $ 650 million. Pichai is a chess enthusiast and admires people like Nelson Mandela, Anthony Shadid Dennis Ritchie, Wangari Maathai, John McCarthy and Aaron Shwatz. This `tech-genie' is riding on the road to success with his passion, determination and motive for the development of the world through technology.

Difficult Words with Meanings :

• Mitigate to make something less harmful or serious etc
• Paved to create situation in which somebody will be able to do something
• Piled to give somebody more or too much of something
• Void a completely empty space
• Mobilise to work together in order to achieve a particular aim
• Memo an official note from one person to another in the same organisation