Pichai Sundararajan, popularly known as Sundar Pichai, is the billionaire tech CEO of Alphabet Inc. Sunder Pichai’s success has consistently grabbed eyeballs across the globe, especially as an immigrant success story.
He has made it to Time’s annual list of the 100 most influential people twice and is a testament to Sundar Pichai’s success in the tech world.
Sundar Pichai Origins
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai came from a middle-class family in Madurai, India. He completed his Business of Technology degree in metallurgy from IIT Kharagpur in 1993 and followed it up with a Masters in Science at Stanford. After completing his MBA from Wharton, he joined McKinsey & Company. He then joined Google in 2004 and was in charge of product development.
One of his key achievements is in helping launch Google Chrome, and eventually Google Drive. Before becoming Google CEO, he oversaw the development of applications like Google Maps and Gmail. In 2013, he added Android to his stellar list of achievements. It has been rumored that Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichaiwas one of the contenders of Microsoft’s top role, before Satya Nadella was appointed CEO.
Trouble at Google
Over the years, Google has come under fire for market dominance and has been dubbed one of the gatekeepers of the Internet. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai’s role as a leader has been anything but smooth sailing.
Two years after becoming Google CEO, in 2017, Pichai faced increased scrutiny after firing a Google employee who wrote a manifesto on the company’s diversity policies.
In the midst of the pandemic, Google’s services team faced a severe mental health crisis. In 2020, Pichai had taken to Twitter to reiterate that mental health is as important as physical health.
In the past few years, his success story has been overshadowed by numerous lawsuits pertaining to anti-trust laws and anti-competitive behavior by Google.
There have also been reports on risk-aversion and an increased fixation on public perception. On the condition of anonymity, a few former Google executives told The New York Times that Pichai does not move quickly on business decisions, which has frustrated employees.
Leadership Lessons
Under Pichai, Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company has hit a valuation of over $1 trillion. The company has been consistently posting record profits and even Google executives who complain about Pichai’s leadership freely admit that he is a thoughtful and caring leader.
Sundar Pichai’s success at Google also comes from the fact that he is a disciplined leader who has put systems in place to ensure processes are run in an organized manner. Even his peers attest to the fact that Pichai has been instrumental in bringing greater order to the California-headquartered company.
Pichai has led the charge in ensuring that Google invests in different causes championing education and equality. He travels the world and collaborates with governments to ensure that the underprivileged have access to tech and other resources. Google has also committed over $1 billion in grants to encourage innovators to solve global challenges.
To be a good leader, Pichai advises people to embrace failure. He admits that failure and success are two sides of the same coin. Sundar Pichai’s success story would be incomplete without the numerous failures he faced along the way.
He continues to stay humble and says that his job as CEO is “encouraging the company to take risks and innovate and be OK with failure–and reward effort, not outcomes.” Pichai encourages rewarding effort over results, as successful teams must go through numerous trials and errors before striking gold.
We can sum up his philosophy on winning at life with one of his famous quotes, “Wear your failures as a badge of honor.”
