Sundar Pichai Birthday Special: 10 interesting facts about Google's CEO

Sundar Pichai, born on 10 June, 1972, is an Indian-American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google.

Here are a few interesting facts about Sundar Pichai:

1. Sundar Pichai was born in Chennai, India.

2. Pichai grew up in a two-room apartment in Ashok Nagar, Chennai and had a Hindu upbringing.

3. He has a degree in metallurgical engineering from IIT Kharagpur.

4. He worked in engineering and product management at Applied Materials and in management consulting at McKinsey & Company.

5. He joined Google in 2004, where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive.

6. On March, 2013, Pichai added Android to the list of Google products that he oversaw.

7. He was selected to become the next CEO of Google on August 10, 2015 after previously being appointed Product Chief by CEO, Larry Page.

8. In August 2017, Pichai fired a Google employee who wrote a ten-page manifesto criticising the company's diversity policies and arguing that "distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and... these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."

While noting that the manifesto raised a number of issues that are open to debate, Pichai said in a memo to Google employees that "to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not okay."

9. Pichai is married and has two children.

10. His interests include football and cricket.