Indian-origin executives who have risen to the top at Alphabet

New CEO Sundar Pichai leads a strong Indian presence at Google. Here are some of the other Indian-origin executives who have risen to the top at the biggest unit of newlycreated holding company Alphabet:

AMIT SINGHAL

Senior VP, search, & Google Fellow

Backing Pichai at the top will be company veteran Singhal who oversees Google’s core business of search. According to media reports, Singhal was persuaded to join Google by friend and former Google principal scientist Krishna Bharat in 2000. Born in 1968 in Ranchi, Singhal has previously worked at AT&T. He’s credited with revamping Google’s search engine in 2001 and was rewarded by being named a Google Fellow.

SRIDHAR RAMASWAMY

Senior VP, ads & commerce

Widely regarded as one of the most important executives in the world of online advertising, Ramaswamy’s rise in Google has been nothing short of meteoric. With stints at Lucent Technologies and Bell Labs under his belt, Ramaswamy is known as an outspoken executive within Google who is not afraid to mince his words. He plays a critical role, given that the company’s revenues are primarily driven by its ads business.

SANJAY GHEMAWAT

Senior fellow

Very little is publicly known about Ghemawat, but a 2012 article in Wired described him as one of the most important — and underrated — software engineers of the internet age. Along with fellow Google researcher Jeff Dean, he published a research paper in 2004 on MapReduce, the number-crunching platform that powers many of Google’s day-today functions.

MANIK GUPTA

Director of product management, Google Maps

Gupta oversees a team of product managers seeking to make Google Maps — intrinsically linked to all apps that use GPS technology — more accurate. Gupta, who has been with Google for more than seven years, has been widely credited with having built Google Maps over the course of his tenure at Google. Gupta has previously worked at HP and even founded his own internet startup in 1999 during the dotcom boom.

APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA

Director, product & engineering, Google Now

Another vital cog in Pichai’s new organisation will be Chennapragada, who is leading a set of efforts to make Google Now an even smarter product. Google Now is the company’s flagship analytics-powered personal assistant, similar to Apple’s Siri.