From Chennai to Silicon Valley

Sundar Pichai’s journey to the top of Google was a long one.

He grew up in Chennai — the baking hot port city formerly known as Madras, which is capital of India’s southern province of Tamil Nadu.

Born into a middle class family of Tamil Brahmins — the caste from which Hindu priests are drawn, which traditionally places a high value on education and knowledge — his father was an electrical engineer with British conglomerate GEC, while his mother was a stenographer.

Although a relatively small community, Tamil Brahmins have had an outsized impact, particularly in the world of business. Indra Nooyi, the former chief executive of PepsiCo, and Natarajan Chandrase-karan, chairman of Tata Sons, both share the same background.

In India, where Pichai is considered a megastar in the mould of cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar or Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan, his career trajectory has a dreamlike quality.

After excelling in school, he won a scholarship to Stanford University, then got an MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

He joined Google in 2004, the year of the company’s initial public offering, after a stint at McKinsey.

A natural engineer, Pichai worked his way up through the ranks, assisting on the development of Google’s Chrome browser and a string of other projects at the technology and search giant.

He was appointed as Google’s chief executive in August 2015 after previously being named product chief by founder Larry Page.

When he got the job of chief executive, his mother’s reaction was predictable: “She wanted to make sure I took care of my health and had enough time to spend with my family.”