Sundar Pichai, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc and its subsidiary Google, is celebrating his 50th birthday today.
The Business Executive, who was born in 1972 in Tamil Nadu's Madurai, has an inspiring tale of success attached to his name
Pichai earned his degree in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and moved to the United States to pursue M.S from Stanford University in Materials Science and Engineering
Sundar Pichai then got an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Siebel Scholar and a Palmer Scholar, respectively
Pichai, who joined Google in 2004, became the CEO of the company in 2015. But the journey to the top wasn't easy
In an old interview with the New York Times, Pichai had talked about his childhood, revealing that he came from a modest family who shared a house with tenants
"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," Pichal had told NYT
"There was a simplicity to my life, which was very nice compared with today's world," Pichai added
Pichai was born in India's Tamil Nadu, and his father was an electrical engineer at a British conglomerate. Pichai's father also had a manufacturing plant that produced electrical components
After moving abroad and finishing college, Pichai joined McKinsey & Company where he worked in engineering and product management at Applied Materials and in management consulting
But in 2004, he joined Google where he gained major popularity for Chrome success. Pichai led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products such as Chrome and Chrome OS. He was also largely responsible for Google Drive
But did you know that Pichai was also a strong contender for the CEO position at Microsoft in 2014? The spot was eventually passed on to Satya Nadella. In December 2019, Pichai also became the CEO of Alphabet Inc
Earlier this year, the Google CEO was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award