Big Ideas, Great things and all the stuff that dreams are made of- Sundar Pichai
As the world reads up about Sundar Pichai and his rise to fame,one cannot help but wonder about what it is that makes seemingly ordinary people do and achieve extraordinary things. Is it ambition, simplicity of thought, an above average IQ or just plain luck?
About Sundar
Sundar Pichai, born in Chennai, India, studied Metallurgical Engineering in IIT-K, pursued an MS from Stanford University in Material Sciences and Engineering and further on obtained an MBA from the Wharton Business School.
To some it may seem that Sundar’s first educational qualification and his career thereafter are disparate but it takes only a few fleeting seconds to realise that it’s just that and nothing more. In-congruent or not, Mr Pichai’s recent appointment as Google’s CEO speaks of a message that’s worth carving out in stone- ‘No matter where you are and what you do, hard work, a vision and a head firmly fixed on the shoulders ALWAYS pays off’.
A quick look at his career biography
Mr Pichai’s career started off in the engineering and product management department at Applied Materials and later in management consulting at McKinsey & Company. It is said that sometime before joining the present day tech giant, Sundar had tried talking his colleague at McKinsey out of joining Google. As fate would have it, he joined Google in 2004 and from thereon began his steady rise from the ranks.
Sundar was assigned the task of managing the ‘Google’ search toolbar, which was an antecedent to Google’s own browser. As it goes, the toolbar was on the upper right corner of other Web browsers. Needless to say, the toolbar was a grand success, the browser an even bigger one and went on to cement Sundar’s position in the company. Later he was the mainspring behind the Chrome browser, the Chrome OS and the Chrome Drive.
A driving force in many different apps, Sundar contributed greatly to the company’s product development line through the years. Following his appointment as Product Chief in October 2014 by none other than Larry Page, Sundar was announced as the CEO of Google on 10 August 2015.
An epic moment that underlined Sundar Pichai’s well deserved growth trajectory while setting forth his future vision of taking the company forward with many more ‘wow’ products, just as he has done in the past.
How this inspires us
Much has been talked about Sundar’s photographic memory and his exhaustive knowledge about Google’s products but what really stands out is not his technical expertise or his affable nature but rather it’s his humble start in life.
As a child, Sundar lived with his family in a two-room apartment and travelled with them on his family’s scooter as they didn’t own a TV or a car. Even today, as he takes on the role as a CEO of the worlds billion dollar tech company, one can truly see that it is his spirit of innovation and his simplicity of thought that make him what he is today.
Much like his prowess with Google’s toolbar and stellar applications thereafter, Sundar’s commitment to making big differences by starting off with little ideas that work, is what really inspires us. It also proves that to do great things, you don’t really need a silver spoon or a big daddy smiling down on you. All it really takes is a relentless zeal to do something sincerely and to do it now!
