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YouTube CEO recalls moving to Lucknow in Class 7 after childhood in US: ‘I sounded funny’
Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, reflected on his early years in Lucknow during a podcast with Nikhil Kamath.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan appeared on Nikhil Kamath’s podcast, where the two discussed a range of topics - from YouTube as a platform for creators and tips to crack its algorithm, to the impact of social media on politics. Amid these more serious topics, the conversation veered briefly towards Mohan’s early years and schooling in Lucknow.
YouTube CEO’s cross-cultural childhood
Mohan was born in India to a father who had studied at IIT. At a young age, he moved to the United States, where his father was pursuing a PhD in soil testing at Purdue University - a transition that shaped his cross-cultural upbringing.
Although he spent much of his childhood in the United States, Mohan and his family moved back to India in 1986. He was then in the seventh grade and joined Lucknow’s St Francis College.
He spent five years in St Francis College, often topping his batch, before he moved back to the United States to pursue electrical engineering at Stanford College.
On his childhood interests
During his conversation with Kamath, the CEO of YouTube opened up about his childhood in the US and how it shaped his interests - “I grew up on Transformers and Star Wars and all of that,” he said.
Even as a teenager, Neal Mohan was interested in technology. “My background is I am a technologist by training. I've been interested in – let's say, passionate about – technology since I was a really young kid.
“I went to high school in Lucknow. I had a little software startup back in the day, building software for other high school kids and teachers, and so I've always had a deep and abiding interest in technology,” Mohan revealed.
On life in Lucknow
“I went to high school in Lucknow. My dad – I was born in India and my dad was getting his PhD – so my parents were grad students when I was born, and came back here for high school,” the CEO of YouTube explained.
Moving to Lucknow in seventh grade brought fresh challenges, not the least of which was Mohan’s lack of fluency in Hindi.
“When growing up in the US, I loved baseball, I loved, you know, Transformers, etc etc,” he told Kamath. “And then coming here where, you know, I sounded funny. I didn't have, sort of like, those immediate things to connect with people on.”
Mohan’s former classmates and teachers remember him being unable to speak in Hindi initially.
“We were in the same section (D) of class VII. He was a bright student but since he came from the US he didn't know Hindi. However, in no time, he learned it and scored high marks in the subject in class X exam,” his former classmate Shantanu Kumar told Times of India.
This account was corroborated by a former teacher at Lucknow’s St Francis College, Nishi Pandey, who told Mid-Day: “His Hindi was a bit anglicised, maybe because he had just got back from the US, but he studied hard and improved. Sometimes, when fellow students would tease him for his spoken Hindi, he’d laugh them off.”
