Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer of Google

Madras (now Chennai), India, is the birthplace of Indian-American executive Sundar Pichai, who served as CEO of Google, Inc. from 2015 and took on the role of CEO of its parent company, Alphabet Inc., in 2019.

As a child in Madras, Pichai shared a small living room with his brother in their modest family home. His father, an electrical engineer at the British multinational GEC, prioritized their education, ensuring they had access to quality schooling.From an early age, Pichai exhibited a keen interest in technology and an impressive memory, particularly for phone numbers.

After completing his B.Tech. in metallurgy with a silver medal from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 1993, he secured a scholarship to Stanford University, where he earned an M.S. in engineering and materials science in 1995. He stayed in the U.S., briefly working for Applied Materials—a supplier of semiconductor materials—before obtaining his M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002.

Pichai’s career took off after a brief tenure at McKinsey Co., as he joined Google in 2004 as head of product management and development. His early focus was on the Google Toolbar, which facilitated access to the Google search engine for users of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

Over the years, he played a pivotal role in developing Google’s own browser, Chrome, launched to the public in 2008. That same year, he was promoted to vice president of product development and began to engage more publicly. By 2012, he had ascended to senior vice president, and two years later, he became the product chief overseeing both Google and the Android smartphone operating system.