Indian talent in international tecnology

The appointment on Tuesday of India-born Sundar Pichai as the new CEO of Google has renewed focus on Indians taking over the charge of large powerhouses and inspiring millions across the world. In this backdrop, let’s take a look at Pichai’s background and some of the other India-born CEOs and the mega corporations they lead.

Sundar Pichai Born in 1972, Pichai grew up in Chennai and did all his schooling in the city. He then later went on to pursue metallurgical engineering at the prestigious Indian Institute of Engineering (Kharagpur) and then, MS at Stanford and MBA at Wharton. It was in 2004 that Pichai joined Google to lead their Chrome OS and Chrome browser divisions.

He was also instrumental in the development of popular apps such as Google Maps. Later, in 2013, he also began to oversee Android, now one of the most popular mobile OS in the world alongside Apple and Windows. On Tuesday, Pichai was named the new CEO of Google as part of a restructuring process in which a parent company, Alphabet, is being formed with Larry Page and Sergey Brin at its helm. Satya Nadella Nadella, born in Hyderabad to a Telugu family, was the son of an IAS officer.

He then later went on to complete his degree in electrical engineering from the Manipal University and then took off for the US to pursue his MS and MBA degrees. In 1992, Nadella joined Microsoft, the powerhouse that was founded by Bill Gates. Within 22 years, he rose through the ranks of the company to be finally named as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft in February last year.

“During this time of transformation, there is no better person to lead Microsoft than Satya Nadella,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft’s Founder and Member of the Board of Directors. In a press release, Microsoft said that “Nadella has spearheaded major strategy and technical shifts across the company’s portfolio of products and services, most notably the company’s move to the cloud and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world supporting Bing, Xbox, Office and other services. During his tenure overseeing Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business, the division outperformed the market and took share from competitors.”