Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai is among the top tech influencers in Silicon Valley right now. The CEO of one of the most powerful tech companies had a very humble early life in India. Pichai says that growing up in Chennai, his family didn’t even have a refrigerator in their house.
In an interview with The New York Times, Google CEO reveals that his early life in Chennai was quite simplistic compared with today’s world. Pichai lived with his parents in a small house which was shared with other tenants. Pichai slept on the floor in the living room. The drought in Chennai brought anxiety among people.
Sundar Pichai was quite passionate about reading. He had a lot of time to read while growing up. He says, “I read whatever I could get my hands on. I read Dickens. Friends, playing street cricket, reading books - that was kind of the totality of life. But you never felt lacking for anything.” He studied at IIT Kharagpur before moving to the United States.
After completing his engineering from IIT Kharagpur, Pichai studied MS in Material Sciences and Engineering from Stanford. He even added that getting access to labs and computers was a big deal back then. Pichai was so occupied with reading that he did not understand there was a big shift happening with the internet. Pichai holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
He said that he traveled by air for the first time when he got admission in Stanford University. Pichai joined Google in 2004 and led the development team for Chrome browser. He took charge of product, engineering, and research efforts for Google in 2014. The tech firm has achieved new heights in product and innovation under the leadership of Pichai. He was made CEO in 2015.
Recently over 20,000 Googlers protested against the company for alleged attempts to curb sexual harassment. Sundar Pichai maintained his calm amid the worldwide protest by Googlers. He said, “People are walking out because they want us to improve and they want us to show we can do better. We're acknowledging and understanding we clearly got some things wrong.”