Sundar Pichai

Google’s founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page will be moving to Alphabet and the new CEO of the Google subsidiary is Indian-born Sundar Pichai, who has a great immigrant story. Today’s New York Times includes this tidbit:

Born in Tamil Nadu, India, Mr. Pichai spent his early years in the Chennai region. In high school, he was captain of the cricket team. He earned a bachelor of engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.

According to a long profile in Bloomberg Businessweek last year, the family did not get its first telephone until Sundar was 12. It was a rotary model. For much of the boy’s childhood, the family did not have a television or a car. The family would get around the city on a scooter, all four members riding at once.

Mr. Pichai came to the United States and attained a master’s of science degree from Stanford, as well as a master’s in business administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania before working as an engineer at Applied Materials, and in management consulting at McKinsey & Company. He joined Google after trying to talk one of his McKinsey colleagues out of going there, then realizing the arguments in favor of joining the company were better.

by Greg Siskind