Sundar Pichai
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Early life
Source: The Times of India
1. The Times of India, Aug 12 2015, Vinayashree Jagadeesh
2. The Times of India, Aug 12 2015, B Sivakumar & Vinayashree Jagadeesh
Magic memory, humble origins, stunning rise
Born and raised in Chennai, Sundar studied in institutions which had modest reputations and facilities at best. Neither Jawahar Vidyalaya at Ashok Nagar (where he did Class X) or Vana Vani Matriculation School on the leafy IIT-Madras campus (where he completed his class XII) are in the elite league. He grew up in a conservative, middleclass Iyengar family in south India, which did not even use a telephone for a long time. The rare outings involved the family of four squeezing together on a scooter.
The teachers now have a hard time placing Sundar who completed his 10th in 1987. “We tend to remember the naughty ones always,“ quipped his economics teacher Uma Prabhakaran, recalling Pichai as a calm boy with good manners.
A well-behaved, academically sound, unassuming student -that's how teachers at Sundar Pichai's alma mater Jawahar Vidyalaya Senior Secondary School in Ashok Nagar, Chennai, described the 41-year-old newly-appointed CEO of Google. “We're proud and elated at the news,“ said school principal Alice Jeevan who taught English when Pichai was a student. “We'll always feel proud of our children's achievements.“ A S Kumar, another school alumni who handles the Jawahar Vidyalaya alumni page, defined Pichai as a `bookish' person. “One of our schoolmates remembers how he fought for every mark, especially in the science paper. If he made a mis take, he'd try to understand where he went wrong and correct it,“ he said.
The pride and elation remains evident in Vana Vani matriculation higher secondary school on the IIT Madras campus, where Pichai completed his schooling.
But he and his brother Srinivasan, also an IIT alumnus, did leave a mark in academics. Sundar, in particular, is also remembered for his phenomenal memory .
“Years ago when Sundar was in school, he came to our house in Mayiladuthurai once. During a conversation, a family friend gave me his phone number. I asked my wife to write it down but she forgot. After some months, I asked Sundar about the number, and he reeled it out in stantly,“ recalled his mother's brother S Raman, a retired bank manager who lives in Chennai.
Their parents Regunatha Pichai and Lakshmi Pichai never had reason to complain about Sundar or his brother's performance, says Raman.“Only once his mother said that both were intelligent.“ For several years the family did not have a telephone and it was only when Sundar was about 12 years old that they got a landline. Sundar's family vehicle was a blue Lambretta. While Regunatha would ride the scooter with Sundar standing between his legs, Srinivasan would be on the seat between his father and mother.
The big transformation in his life came at IIT, where his interest in electronics and IT grew. “Though he did BTech in metallurgy from Kharagpur, he was interested in electronics,“ said Raman. IIT was also where Sundar met his future wife, Anjali, a native of Mumbai.
A soft-spoken, amiable person with an outstanding academic record, Sundar managed to land a coveted scholarship at an Ivy League college. “He first completed MS from Stanford University and after this Anjali did MS while Sundar was doing a stint as a consultant at McKinsey,“ said Raman.
Schools attended
On Wiki, a row over new CEO's school
The newsbreak on the new Google CEO sparked an unexpected turf war on Sundar Pichai's Wikipedia page with users altering the name of the schools in Chennai he studied in, online news trackers reported. Pichai finished his Class X from Jawahar Vidyalaya at Ashok Nagar and completed his 12th from Vana Vani Matriculation School. But names of such institutions as Padma Sheshadri Bala Bhavan School, GRT Mahalakshmi Vidyalaya and All Angels School made it to the page before they were eventually taken down. Chennai schools are known to be competitive and this may well have been a case of excited alumni trying to appropriate the world's hottest tech executive's schooling credentials.
Did Twitter rumours hasten Pichai's rise?
The Times of India, Aug 13 2015
Was Twitter tempting Sundar Pichai with the offer of its CEO position?
Did that get Google to fast forward its reorganization move?
There's been intense speculation along these lines ever since Google announced, suddenly and rather unexpectedly , that it was creating a new umbrella company called Alphabet which would have under it a slimmed down Google and a slew of other ventures that would be independent of Google. Business Insider quoted a person close to Twitter as saying: “I've been hearing that (the speculation) too and I wouldn't be shocked if they want him as CEO. They tried to hire him once about three years ago and got very close. Google countered with a huge package to keep him there. I can't imagine him making the change after being named CEO of Google today .“
Twitter has been looking for a CEO since June, when the then CEO Dick Costolo resigned. Twitter had then announced that co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey would be interim CEO while the Board conducts an executive search.
Few believe Pichai would have been tempted by the offer, if indeed it was made. Pichai, as the No 2 at Google, a far more powerful company than Twitter, would likely have been comfortable where he was. In 2011, it was rumoured that Twitter had tried to lure Pichai to head the company's consumer product division, and that Google awarded Pichai millions of dollars in stock grants to stop him from leaving.
Pichai, with his strengths in technology and execution, and his ability to take everybody along, has always been seen as a potentially prized catch for rivals. He was also rumoured to be one of the contenders for the CEO position of Microsoft, when the company was conducting its own search in 2014
