Sundar Pichai is the current Chief Executive Officer at Google. He is known for his unique leadership of the mega company. In this article, we are going to be looking at 20 fascinating facts about Sundar Pichai. These facts, give an overview of his life history, as well as an overview of his lifestyle.
Before you start reading these fascinating facts about Sundar Pichai, beware that facts listed in this article are real facts about him. These fascinating facts are listed as follows:
1. He Has An Habit
Sundar Pichai has formed an habit of walking it out whenever he is deep in thought. So, getting up in the middle of a meeting and strolling away for a while is not him being rude, it is him going out to look for the answer to whatever issue is being discussed at the time.
2. Modest Beginning
His upbringing was quite decent but he is currently worth over $1.2 billion.
3. He Is From India
He was born in Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. His full name is Pichai Sundararajan.
4. His Dad Never Joked With His Education
His dad, an electrical engineer, who never joked with the education of Sundar and his brother, saved up for three solid years just to buy the family a new scooter.
5. His Father Sparked His Love For Technology
His father recently came out to say, discussing the problems he faced within his electrical engineering job with Sundar Pichai led to his interest in technology.
6. He Is A Fan Of Cricket
Sundar Pichai captained his high schools cricket team yesterday.
7. Highly Educated
He earned his Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of technology. His MS from Stanford and MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He even won a scholarship to Stanford.
8. He Has Always Been A Google Man
Pichai has been Google’s employee since 2004. He joined the famous company to lead product management for Chrome and Chrome 0S. He delved into Google Drive and eventually oversaw Gmail and Google maps.
9. He Almost Joined Twitter
Pichai could’ve joined Twitter in 2011. He was considered by the monster company but he chose to remain with Google.
10. He Almost Joined Microsoft
Microsoft almost lured him, but Google intervened and retained him for 50 million dollars a year in stocks.
11. He Had A Pet Project
Pichai’s own project, “Android one.” launched in India on September 2014. It was designed to provide affordable smartphones to all households.
12. He Took Over From Eric Schmidt
He was recently appointed CEO of Google just newly but he has been in charge of the day to day operations since October 2014.
13. He Tried To Run Facebook/Whatsapp Relationship
He was reported to have convinced Whatsapp founder Jan Koum not to sell to Facebook. He was not successful.
14. He Is A Neat Freak
Dieter Bohn once described Pichai’s office as “clean to the point of being Spartan.”
15. He Is Married
Sundar Pichai is a married man with 2 kids. He married the love of his life, Anjali, who he dated back in India before she moved to USA to be with him.
16. He Has A Gift
Sundar Pichai has a very rare gift. It started right from his childhood days till adulthood. The tech guru has Insanely numerical recall – He can remember every number he has ever dialed.
17. He Advised A Friend Wrongly
Pichai once discouraged a friend from becoming a Google employee, before he took a job there. Some might say he was merely being an hypocrite, others thought it was just a change of mind.
18. IIT Kharagpur Remains A Part Of Him
He Skypes with students of IIT Kharagpur regularly. This just goes to show how he creates time from his busy schedule to discuss things that are important to the future leaders, the students.
19. He Is Likeable
He is likeable. His colleagues have come out to say it, his family and close friends think that as well. He is described as a well-grounded boss who is very easy to communicate with.
20. He Handled ToolBar
Sundar Pichai’s main success with Google came when he was given the opportunity to handle Toolbar. He used this to bring in a lot of revenue for Google as Toolbar was a massive hit. This creation also made Google come up with its own browser in 2008, Google Chrome.
Hope you found these facts about Sundar Pichai, to be interesting. If you have more interesting facts about him, feel free to share it in the comment box below.