Sundar Pichai: from a Chennai flat to leading Google

A curious boy in a two-room flat

Sundar Pichai was born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, in 1972 and grew up in Chennai. His family lived in a small two-room apartment, and he and his younger brother slept in the living room. His father, Regunatha Pichai, was an electrical engineer at the British company GEC. His mother worked for a while as a stenographer.

There was not much technology at home. In his 2020 message to graduating students, he said the family got their first telephone when he was about ten, and their television showed only one channel. A Deccan Chronicle report says that as a child he was curious about his father's work, and that curiosity drew him towards technology.

His parents put their savings into their children's education. When he received the Padma Bhushan in 2022, he said he grew up in a family that valued learning and knowledge, and that his parents made sacrifices so he could follow his interests.

He studied at Jawahar Vidyalaya in Ashok Nagar and at Vana Vani school on the IIT Madras campus, where he finished Class 12.

“Don't lose that impatience. It will create the next technology revolution.”

— Sundar Pichai, via Google (The Keyword)

Topping the class at IIT Kharagpur

In 1989 he cleared the IIT entrance exam and joined IIT Kharagpur to study metallurgical engineering. One of his teachers, Professor Sanat Kumar Roy, later described him as a quiet, calm student who was very bright but never showed off.

From his second year he took a strong interest in electronic materials, the materials used to make electronic chips and devices. According to Professor Roy, he was the only student in his batch to choose that specialisation, and he wrote his final-year thesis on it. He graduated in 1993 as the topper of his class and received the Bidhan Chandra Roy Memorial silver medal.

A costly ticket and a first real computer

He won a scholarship to study materials science at Stanford University in the United States. His father tried to take a loan for the plane ticket, but it did not come through, so the family used its savings. Sundar has said the ticket cost his father about a year's salary, and it was his first time on a plane.

Life in California was hard at first. A phone call home cost more than two dollars a minute, and a backpack cost as much as his father earned in a month. He missed his family and friends.

But Stanford gave him something new: a computer he could use whenever he wanted, at a time when the internet was just starting to spread. Computing became the bright spot of those years. He later said that if he had stayed on in graduate school, he would probably have a PhD. Instead, he moved into the technology industry.

From Toolbar to CEO

He began his career at Applied Materials, an American technology company. Later he earned an MBA from the Wharton School and worked at the consulting firm McKinsey.

He joined Google in 2004, where his early work was on the Google Toolbar, a small add-on for web browsers. He went on to lead product work on Chrome, the Google browser launched in 2008. In 2013 he also took charge of Android, the operating system used on a huge number of smartphones.

In August 2015 he became the CEO of Google. In December 2019 he also became CEO of Alphabet, Google's parent company. In their letter announcing the change, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin said they had worked closely with him for 15 years. In 2022 the Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, which he received from India's ambassador in San Francisco.

The skills and habits that made the difference

Curiosity came early. Even with very little technology at home, he was interested in how his father's work and new devices changed daily life. He has said that each new technology that reached his home made life better, and that this is what led him to Google.

He went deep into one area. At IIT he chose a specialisation nobody else in his batch picked and wrote his thesis on it, while finishing at the top of his class.

He kept an open mind. He trained as a metallurgical engineer, discovered computing in his twenties, and changed direction instead of sticking to the path he started on. In his 2020 message he named a deep passion for technology and an open mind as what carried him forward.

He stayed humble. His professor remembered a student who did not show off, and Google's founders praised the humility he brought to his work.