Sunder Pichai From The Beginning To Peak Of Success.docx

Sunder Pichai from the Beginning to Peak of Success Born on the 12th of July 1972, Sundararajan Pichai or better known as Sundar Pichai who has recently become the talk of literally every town, is the CEO of Google Inc. The story of Sundar Pichai is one of those that inspires people and gives them hope for a better future. This magnate however, has a very humble beginning. He was born in Chennai (India) on 12th July 1972 to Ragunath Pichai and Lakshmi respectively. His father also worked in the technology sectors as he served as the senior Engineer in British company GEC or General electric company. Most of his childhood was spent in a two-room apartment, filled with a range of compromises. Going by the buzz on the internet, the family didn’t even own a car and got their first telephone when Sundar was 12 years old. The spectacular track record of his studies is also one of the key reasons behind his success. He finished his 10th standard in Jawahar School at Ashok Nagar. Later on till his 12th he was part of VanaVani School at IIT Chennai. Afterwards his natural inclination towards technology pulled him towards pursuing engineering from IIT Kharagpur, where he graduated with a degree in Metallurgical Engineering. Even though he was advised by his teachers at IIT Kharagpur to do his Ph.D from Stanford University, Sundar Pichai completed his MS, followed by an MBA. He completed his Master of Science from Stanford in Material Sciences and Engineering. For his Master’s in Business Administration, he went to the reputed Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Management. Career Initially, he went on to work in the field of engineering and product management in Applied Materials after the completion of his studies. Later he joined Mckinsey & Company to work as a Management Consultant. In the year 2004, he started working at Google. He was given the responsibility of new idea generation in product development. He was playing a key role in the

development of various Google softwares including Google Chrome, Chrome OS and Google Drive, Google Maps and Google Chrome. He was the one to present Chrome OS on 19 Nov 2009. Later in 2011, Chrome book was launched by Google for research and development and in 2012 it was available for public. Even though the information of Sundar Pichai being nominated for the post of CEO came out in 2014, it was not until 2015, that it was officially announced that he would replace Andy Robin as the CEO of Google. Larry Page, Google’s co-founder had decided as early as 24 October 2014 that Pichai would take up the responsibility after the completion of the project, Alphabet Inc. Sundar Pichai is liked by his colleagues who often say that he is the “Man behind Google’s most important products.” Work Philosophy Sundar Pichai, has an amazing work philosophy, which just might be one of the reasons for his enormous success. He doesn’t come across as an arrogant Silicon Valley CEO but as a humble and friendly face with passion for technology. Pichai believes in being the person who could string a team together and get work done. On his most recent visit to his Alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur, he inspired students with his work philosophy. He said, “When you’re trying to run something at the scale of Google, we have now over 60,000 people and…you rely on other strong leaders. A lot of what I do is… I have an outstanding leadership team. It’s learning to let go and really empowering people at all levels of the organization, and trusting them to doing the right thing. As a leader, a lot of your job is to make those people successful. It’s less about trying to be successful (yourself), and more about making sure you have good people and your work is to remove that barrier, remove roadblocks for them so that they can be successful in what they do. So that’s how I’ve always thought about it. I also value teamwork quite a bit and I think it’s really important to build organizations where people really want to work together. Everything comes out of that. So, setting up collaborative cultures is another big thing I’ve been trying to focus on.” He doesn’t just discussed his leadership style with students but also discussed useful life and work tips that budding entrepreneurs and potential CEO’s could use in their lives. His main message to the students of today was to “loosen up and have some fun”. He told the young crowd: “Academics is important but it is not as important as it’s made out to be,” He further said, “I worked hard but we did have our share of fun as well.” Referring to the his times in the college when he was studying metallurgical engineering, when he stayed up late and slept occasionally through lectures, which might have even earned him a C on one of the courses. Another key advice that the CEO had to give the students was not to overthink anything and to not to let setbacks demotivate you. He said, “It’s a long road, setbacks actually don’t matter.”