The rapid climb of Sundar Pichai to technology peak: From school days to Silicon Valley

CHENNAI: Sundararajan Pichai, who was born in Madurai, schooled in Chennai and has now risen to the helm of Google is remembered mostly as a studious boy locally. Fiercely-competitive academically, he used to be a child with a passion "to be at the top," recount schoolmates and family as the news of his elevation spread in the calm, tree-lined neighbourhood of Ashok Nagar in Chennai. Pichai’s parents RS Pichai and Lakshmi Pichai, are in the US. They called relatives back home in Chennai, on Tuesday morning, to deliver the good news. RS Pichai, Sundar’s father, had worked with the English Electric Company of India, which later became Alstom T&D India.

People in the neighbourhood say the senior Pichai was a "brilliant" engineer. Pichai’s maternal grandmother Ranganayaki recalled that Pichai had prioritised work over play even during his school days. "He used to play cricket with friends but never let it affect his studies," she says, standing behind a grilled door reluctant to take further questions. "He hated wasting time," she said as she disappeared behind a door. The quiet neighbourhood was clearly not accustomed to the sudden media attention it was getting, drawing a local police patrol’s attention.

"Even as a child, Rajesh was focused. He was a child with a plan," says a help at Pichai’s grandparent’s home, referring to the Google CEO by his childhood name.

Schoolmates say Pichai had a mix of brilliance and academic focus. "He was passionate about math and science, and had a tight circle of friends equally focused on academics. He was not a problem child. I don’t remember him on the wrong side of law," says Srividhya Sainathan, who had studied along with Pichai in the neighbourhood school Jawahar Vidyalaya. The principal regretfully admitted she does not remember Pichai, though she had heard of his rise well before the appointment as CEO.

Sainathan remembers a healthy academic rivalry between Pichai and a student Sankara J Subramanian, who is now a professor at IIT-Madras. Subramanian could not be reached for comment.

Pichai had moved on after finishing 10th grade in Jawahar Vidyalaya to a school inside the IIT-Madras campus. Staff of Vana Vani Matriculation Higher Secondary School said they took some time to confirm he was a student in the school before announcing it in the morning assembly, as the teachers in the late 1980s had retired. "It took us sometime to confirm that he is our student. It’s a long period of around 25 years. He studied here in the 1987-89 batch. He attended his 11th and 12th here and people barely remember him. All teachers of that time have retired. We had to confirm it through his batchmates that he is an alumni of the school. In records his name is Sundararajan P with father’s name given as Pichai," said Vice-principal Xavier Sagayanathan.

"We don’t have the details of his contact, because in our alumni register his name is not there. For our golden jubilee celebrations we had contacted all the alumni, but not him because his name was not there in the register," Sagayanathan recounted. He bagged a seat at IIT-Kharagpur, where he studied metallurgy. He proceeded to Stanford for a master’s in Science and an MBA from The Wharton School.

Pichai is not a talker, but can engage deeply in conversations, says Aravind Vasudevan, his cousin, who is completing his Ph.D in computer science at the Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. "He is obviously brilliant, but also down to earth. He loves his family and very respectful to elders," Vasudevan said of Pichai’s personal traits.