Highlights:
- Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google talks about his humble roots in his speech
- He talks about the importance of staying positive in life
- Pichai said, “My Father Spent A Year’s Salary On My Plane Ticket To US”
Amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Google, Sundar Pichai, shared a very special message with all the graduating class of 2020 saying, Be open, be impatient and be hopeful.
While addressing the students worldwide from his “backyard” during the YouTube’s Dear Class of 2020 virtual ceremony, Sundar Pichai talked about his humble roots, and he highlighted that staying positive in life during the difficult times is very important.
The 47 year old IIT Kharagpur alumnus recounted the challenges he, personally, faced when he embarked on the journey and left Indian to pursue his studies in the US at Stanford University.
He recalled, “My father spent the equivalent of a year’s salary on my plane ticket to the US so I could attend Stanford. It was my first time ever on a plane…America was expensive. A phone call back home was more than $2 a minute, and a backpack cost the same as my dad’s monthly salary in India,”.
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The event, which streamed on YouTube, was attended by the former the US, Barak Obama and the former First Lady of the US, Michelle Obama along with singer and actress Lady Gaga, singer Beyonce, and South Korean band BTS among many others.
Sundar Pichai also drew a comparison between how he “grew up without much access to technology”, and the children today who have access to the “computers of all shapes and sizes” from an early age.
Sundar Pichai, who is also the CEO of Alphabet, the parent firm of Google, said, “I grew up without much access to technology. We didn’t get our first telephone till I was ten. I didn’t have regular access to a computer until I came to America for graduate school. And, our television, when we finally got one, only had one channel,”.
Sundar Pichai grew up in Chennai and began his career as a materials engineer after which he joined Google as a management executive in the year 2004.
He proved himself time and again and became Google’s Product Chief and the CEO in 2015 when the company went through a restructuring process which turned Alphabet Inc. into the parent company of Google.
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In December 2019, Pichai was also handed the command of Alphabet Inc. and was appointed the CEO of the firm while retaining the CEO’ship at Google.
