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Last week, when Google announced the name of Sundar Pichai as its CEO, the first Indian-American to head the world’s largest internet search engine company, which last week became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the newly-created Alphabet following strategic restructuring of the $400 billion tech giant, a celebratory mood gripped tech-workers in Silicon Valley.
For many Indian-Americans, who have a large presence in Silicon Valley, the mood was almost akin to a Diwali except that nobody was actually lighting up earthen lamps in their homes. “The Indian-American community was kind of feeling giddy with the stupendous success of one of their own and for most of them it was simply incredible,” said venture capitalist Vish Mishra of Clearstone Venture Partners, and a former president of The Indus Entrepreneurs. For those in the Silicon Valley, who knew Pichai as Chhupa Rustam from his IIT Kharagpur days for ability to spring a surprise when it is least expected, the man has arrived.
“It just uplifted their mood,” he said adding that the excitement was infectious and gripped people in other communities as well and in other cities of North America as also in India.
“Obviously, people were extremely upbeat over his appointment and for right reasons. After all, this was really huge and all of us celebrated the announcement,” said Avik Pal, president, IIT Foundation, Bay area Chapter (Alumni association of IIT Kharagpur).
The joy was in India as well. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is scheduled to visit Silicon Valley during his official engagement in the United States next month, congratulated 43-year-old Madurai-born Pichai. Within hours of his promotion announcement, Modi tweeted him. “Congratulations @sundarpichai. My best wishes for the new role at @google,” he wrote on Twitter.
Although it was incredible for many that a 43-year-old Indian-American could rise to the helm of a company like Google at a relatively young age, those in know of things said it was in the making given his incredible talent, and dedication to the company he joined about 11 years ago as a leader of product management and innovation. “He was bound to rise through the corporate ladder some day. The only thing is that he rose to the top faster than many thought he would,” Mishra said. The Wall Street Journal noted that the low-key style of Sundar, whose full name is Sundararajan Pichai, paid off.
Pichai, who was raised in Madras, is an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus and holds an MS in Engineering and Materials Science from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School. He came to the U.S. on a scholarship to study at Stanford University— the alma mater of Google founders, including Larry Page.
In a Google blog post while announcing restructuring the company, Page, the outgoing CEO, wrote that Sundar has been saying the things he (Page) would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now. “I’ve been tremendously enjoying our work together. He has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our Internet businesses. Sergey and I have been super excited about his progress and dedication to the company.
“And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google. I feel very fortunate to have someone as talented as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google,” Page wrote.
Following his appointment as CEO of Google Pichai becomes only the second person of Indian origin after Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, to head a technology titan, and joins the league of illustrious professionals like Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, and Ajay Banga, president and CEO MasterCard.
Among them, Microsoft’s Nadella was the first to congratulate Pichai. He tweeted on Pichai’s elevation at the company, writing in the micro-blogging site: “Congrats @sundarpichai Well-deserved.”
Pichai’s parents R.S. Pichai and Lakshmi Pichai are in the U.S. as is his wife Anjali, a batch mate of Pichai from Kharagpur, and obviously they were overjoyed at the success of Pichai who is believed to have set his eyes early on during the student days to come to the United States for higher studies.
A question that was doing rounds in the Silicon Valley and elsewhere as to what makes Indian-Americans, especially those in hi-tech industries achieve such success?
Vinod Dham, known as the Father of Pentium processor who worked for 16 years at Intel, heading a group that designed the company’s best-selling Pentium chip before founding his own company, believes Indians are inherently well-suited for leading these established tech giants because of necessary hands-on technical background and capability to lead complex projects and can deliver bottom line results.
“By definition, the ones who leave homes to come to distant shores have the zeal and ambition to grow and to better their future. This mindset enables ease with which they focus on future growth opportunities for their existing businesses, an important goal for these established giants,” Dham, one of the best known Indian American faces in Silicon Valley until the arrival of the likes of Nadella, said.
No wonder, according to Inc.com quoting FullNetworth, Sundar Pichai enjoys a net worth of $150 million.
“Getting anything done in India requires building relationships and dealing with multiple interfaces and personalities. These traits become very handy in the complex world of technology business where you have to work with a wide variety of entities, from suppliers, buyers, customers and even competitors, to collaborate for your success,” Dham, who now is a venture capitalist, said.
Venture capitalist Venk Shukla, who holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, and currently the chairman of TiE, had almost a similar take on the subject, but said he does not believe in traditional perception that Indians get to the top just because they are technically savvy and have good command over English language.
“That is a whole bunch of stereotyping. Of course, these are necessary, but I feel the main reason people like Nadella and now Pichai have made it to the top is because of their social background and ability to handle diversity which is very important in companies like Google and Microsoft that hire people from all different countries and cultures,” he said.
Shukla explained why he thinks so. “The success of Indian people, especially in tech industry has less to do with skills in English language and clichés like ‘only the best of the best’ come to the U.S. and all that. In my mind while all these matters to some extent, one thing that is underappreciated is the fact that the technology industry is extremely diverse that attracts talents from all over the world and India is one of the only two really diverse countries in the world, the other being the U.S., that knows how to handle diversity and manage them. By growing up in India a person instinctively learns early on in life how to manage and make the best of diversity and learn to respect it,” he said.
Dham said that the Indian way of upbringing has given people a mindset to be able to deal with the business uncertainties and ups and down with relative ease. “Keeping many balls in the air, without dropping the important ones is built into our training from the challenges we face in growing up in a 1.2B people nascent democracy,” he said.
Shukla and others felt that it is a tribute to companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Google that they spot talent and give those opportunities to people even though they look different, talk different and have different backgrounds.
“Indians know that people are different, not inferior, and not superior. People who come from homogeneous societies have to learn that thing in the U.S. because when they come to Silicon Valley, they meet people from different backgrounds, different religions and languages. To Indians, this comes naturally,” he said.
There might be some truth in his observation as Pichai has been known to be a person who gets on very well with people in Google and is a kind of team player who can get things done in his inimitable style.
Business Insider said quoting Maarten Hooft, a partner at the venture capital firm Quest Venture Partners and who worked at Google for six years between 2006 and 2012, as saying that Sundar is the guy who can get visions of people like Page translated.
“He can assemble the team, he can appoint the right people, and he’s the one that makes it happen,” according to a Business Insider report.
Said Mishra: “Pichai commands very high respect within Google. There has not been one word of negativity about him, not just within Google but even from the larger tech community here in the Silicon Valley following his appointment,” he said.
“The reason he is liked by people is because of he is technically very smart and he has wonderful peoples’ skills. He is not overbearing and is a fine human being. Most important he gets along with people. Even when you compare him with Larry Page, I must say Pichai’s style has been very different from his predecessor. This Tamil Brahmin obviously grew up with traditional family values – learning to respect others, showing humility, and yet holding on his conviction – something most of us Indian Americans grew up with while in India.”
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