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Sundar Pichai turns 52: Tech billionaire's journey from Madurai to Google CEO
Sundar Pichai moved to the United States to pursue MS from Stanford University in materials science and engineering.
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, is celebrating his 52th birthday today. Born in 1972 in Tamil Nadu's Madurai, Sundar Pichai earned his degree in metallurgical engineering from IIT Kharagpur. He then moved to the United States to pursue MS from Stanford University in materials science and engineering. Following this, he got an MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Siebel Scholar and a Palmer Scholar as well.
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Talking about his childhood in Madurai, he said in an interview, “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. There was a simplicity to my life, which was very nice compared with today's world.”
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Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004. When Sundar Pichai joined Google, he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products such as Chrome and Chrome OS and was also reportedly responsible for Google Drive. He became the CEO of the company in 2015.
Talking about his parents, Sundar Pichai recently reflected, “I perceived our lives through the arrival of gadgets. We waited five years for a telephone, it was a rotary phone. But when it came to our home, it changed our lives. I remember getting our first television and suddenly being able to watch sports.”
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He added, “I used to bike a long way to school, there was no gear in the bike and I had to go uphill. After many years I got a bike with gears and I’m like Wow! What a dramatic difference. I never took technology for granted. I’ve always been optimistic about how technology can make a difference.”
