10 facts you may not know about Google's new CEO, Sundar Pichai

Dataquest digs up some facts about Sundar Pichai which you may not know:

#1 The world today might be knowing him as Sunder Pichai, but he was born as Pichai Sundararajan. Born in Chennai, Pichai’s professors call him a modest, well-mannered and high intellectual student who joined the metallurgical department at IIT Kharagpur in 1989. He won a scholarship to Stanford University, and worked at the Applied Materials and McKinsey before joining Google.

#2 Pichai hails from a very middle-class background. His family did not own a car or a television during his childhood. Pichai had his first tryst with a phone at the age of 12. His father was an electrical engineer and his mother worked as a stenographer. His father had to save for three years to buy the family a new scooter. Though he had a very modest upbringing, today Pichai's personal wealth is estimated to be approximately $150 mn.

#3 As reported in a Businessweek profile, Pichai’s father withdrew $1000 from family savings to fund his son’s flight to the US when he was travelling to the US for studies

#4 Pichai was the one who floated the idea of a new browser ‘Chrome’. Initially, the idea was not welcome at Google as the company felt there was no need for another browser. But today, Chrome is the leading and most popular Internet browser in the world and has long displaced Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

#5 He joined Google in 2004 to lead product management for Google Chrome and Chrome OS. He was largely responsible for the creation for Google Drive, the Gmail app, and Google video codec.

#6 Press reports say that Sundar Pichai was approached by Twitter in 2011 but Google paid him a whopping $50 million to stay back with them. It is also believed that when Microsoft was looking for a replacement for former chief Steve Ballmer, Pichai was one of the contenders for the CEO but Google reportedly negotiated to retain him for $50 million a year in stocks.

#7 According to Silicon India, Pichai is an avid player of chess and also loves cricket. He was actually the captain of his high school cricket team. He is married to his long-time girlfriend Anjali and has two kids.

#8 His rise in Google took on an increasingly meteoric tenor since the time he joined. Last year in October, Pichai was promoted to Product Chief, making him Larry Page’s (Google’s Co-founder) second-in-command and given the responsibility of overseeing day-to-day operations for all of Google’s major products including search engine, maps, and advertising.

#9 Pichai’s colleagues describe him as a skilled diplomat. In a blogpost, Larry Page describes him as, “Pichai has really stepped up since October 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.” Caesar Sengupta, Google Vice President, who worked with him for close to eight years told Bloomberg News, “I would challenge you to find anyone at Google who doesn’t like Sundar or who thinks Sundar is a jerk.”

#10 In an interview to Bloomberg, Pichai’s father said that the work challenges he had as an electrical engineer led to his son’s interest in technology