When Padma Bhushan Sundar Pichai Spoke About his Modest Chennai Home; Said ‘we’ll Sleep on the Floor’
December 4, 2022: Google CEO Sundar Pichai was awarded the country’s third-highest civilian award in San Francisco on Friday in the presence of his immediate family members.
Expressing his happiness at being recognized by his hometown, Pichai said, “It means so much to be honored in this way by the country that shaped me”.
Google’s Indian-origin CEO was conferred the Padma Bhushan award by Indian Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu in San Francisco on Friday.
Madurai-born Pichai was conferred the country’s third-highest civilian award in the presence of his immediate family members.
On being honored with the Third Citizen of India Award, he said, “India is a part of me and I carry it with me wherever I go.”
While he is considered among the world’s most recognized CEOs, Pichai had humble beginnings and slept on the floor like many Indians.
In an interview years ago, the 50-year-old opened up about his life in Chennai which had a unique “ease”. Speaking about his “modest home” in the Indian city, Pichai revealed that his family didn’t have a refrigerator, but growing up in India was still “cool compared to today’s world”.
Pichai said this is because despite a lack of resources to buy basic items like a refrigerator, people “never feel that there is a lack of anything.”
“We lived in a kind of modest house, shared with tenants. We slept on the living room floor. There was a drought when I was growing up, and we were worried.
Even now, I can never sleep without a bottle of water. Next to my bed. Other houses had refrigerators, and then we finally got one.
It was a big deal,” the IIT-Kharagpur alumnus said during an interview with The New York Times. Pichai, who joined Google in 2004, became the company’s CEO in 2015.
He holds a BA in Metallurgical Engineering and an MS in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
During his childhood in Chennai, Pichai read anything he could get his hands on. He summed up his life in India — as “friends, playing street cricket, reading books”.
The Google boss also recalled traveling on a plane for the first time after getting admission to Stanford University.
“Coming in and just having these labs where you had access to computers and you could program, that was a big thing for me. I was so wrapped up in it, that to some extent I didn’t realize that there was something much bigger than that.
It happened with the Internet. has been,” he told the publication. Pichai was honored with Padma Bhushan – Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who was one of the 17 Padma Bhushan awardees announced earlier this year, has been honored with India’s 3rd highest civilian award in the business and industry category.
The Madurai-born Indian-origin CEO of Google was presented with the award by Taranjit Singh Sandhu, the Indian ambassador to the US. Pichai was awarded the country’s third-highest civilian award in San Francisco on Friday in the presence of his immediate family members.
Expressing his happiness at being recognized by his hometown, Pichai said, “It means so much to be honored in this way by the country that shaped me”.
“I was fortunate to grow up in a family that valued education and knowledge, with my parents who sacrificed a lot to ensure that I had opportunities to explore my interests,” Pichai said.
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