Pichai Sundararajan (born June 10 better known as Sundar Pichai is an Indian-American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet.
Pichai was born in Madras, India, and received his metallurgical engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur. After relocating to the United States, he earned an M.S. in materials science and engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where he was designated a Siebel Scholar and a Palmer Scholar, respectively.
Pichai's first job was as a materials engineer. Following a brief spell at management consulting company McKinsey & Co., Pichai joined Google in 2004, where he was in charge of product management and innovation for a number of Google's client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS, as well as Google Drive. In addition, he oversaw the development of other Google products including Gmail and Google Maps. In 2010, Pichai also announced Google's open-sourcing of the VP8 video codec and the introduction of the WebM video format. In 2012, Google unveiled the Chromebook. Pichai added Android to the list of Google products he oversees in 2013.
Early life and education
Pichai was born in the Indian city of Madras (now
Chennai). His mother, Lakshmi, worked as a stenographer, while his father,
Regunatha Pichai, worked for the British corporation GEC as an electrical
engineer. His father also had an electrical component manufacturing company.
Pichai had a Hindu childhood and grew up in a two-room flat in Ashok Nagar,
Chennai.
Pichai attended Jawahar Vidyalaya Senior Secondary
Institution in Ashok Nagar, Chennai, a Central Board of Secondary Education
school, and graduated from IIT Madras' Vana Vani school in Class XII.
He is a prominent alumni of IIT Kharagpur, where he received his degree in metallurgical engineering. He has an M.S. in materials science and engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Career
Pichai speaking at the 2015 Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona, Spain
Pichai worked in engineering and product management at
Applied Materials and in management consulting at McKinsey & Company.
Pichai joined Google in 2004, where he led the product management and
innovation efforts for a suite of Google’s client software products, including
Google Chrome[25] and Chrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for
Google Drive. He went on to oversee the development of other applications such
as Gmail and Google Maps.On November 19, 2009, Pichai gave a demonstration of
Chrome OS; the Chromebook was released for trial and testing in 2011, and released
to the public in 2012. On May 20, 2010, he announced the open-sourcing of the
new video codec VP8 by Google and introduced the new video format, WebM.
On March 13, 2013, Pichai added Android to the list of
Google products that he oversaw. Android was formerly managed by Andy Rubin. He
was a director of Jive Software from April 2011 to July 30, 2013.Pichai was
selected to become the next CEO of Google on August 10, 2015 after previously
being appointed Product Chief by CEO, Larry Page. On October 24, 2015 he
stepped into the new position at the completion of the formation of Alphabet
Inc., the new holding company for the Google company family.
Pichai had been suggested as a contender for
Microsoft’s CEO in 2014, a position that was eventually given to Satya Nadella.
In August 2017, Pichai drew publicity for firing a
Google employee who wrote a ten-page manifesto criticizing the company’s
diversity policies and arguing that “distribution of preferences and abilities
of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and … these
differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and
leadership”. While noting that the manifesto raised a number of issues that are
open to debate, Pichai said in a memo to Google employees that “to suggest a
group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to
that work is offensive and not OK”.
In December 2017, Pichai was a speaker at the World
Internet Conference in China, where he stated that “a lot of work Google does
is to help Chinese companies. There are many small and medium-sized businesses
in China who take advantage of Google to get their products to many other countries
outside of China.”
In December 2019, Pichai became the CEO of Alphabet
Inc.
In December 2020, Pichai delivered a speech virtually
at the Singapore FinTech Festival emphasizing inclusive digital economy.
The coronavirus outbreak has sped up the adoption of
digital tools and trends by years. Southeast Asia’s Internet economy is
currently on the verge of a massive transformation. More than 40 million people
in the region connected to the Internet for the first time in 2020 four times as many as the year before.while
Covid has accelerated the use of digital tools, it’s also exposed how many
people are still left behind.some 1.7 billion people around the world are still
unbanked, a huge portion of African households do not have access to broadband
and millions of women entrepreneurs lack the same access to opportunity as
their male counterparts.
· Pichai said at the conclusion of his speech,
Our goal for the post-Covid world is to ensure the
benefits of technology can be shared, as widely and equitably as possible. If
we can do that, 2020 will be remembered not as the end of the world, but the
beginning of a world that works better for everyone.
Personal life
Pichai is married to Anjali Pichai and has two
children.His recreational interests include cricket and football.
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