Sundar Pichai joins a gradually growing list of Indian-origin CEOs
India-born Sundar Pichai has been named as the new CEO of restructured Google
Mumbai: Sundar Pichai has joined a gradually growing list of Indian-origin technology and business executives working their way up to head multiple-billion dollar worth American giants. In February last year, Nadella was named Microsoft CEO, becoming the technology giants only third chief executive after Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates in its 40-year history. PepsiCo's CEO is also India-born Indra Nooyi and MasterCard is headed by Ajay Banga.
Hyderabad-born Shantanu Narayen was appointed Adobe CEO in 2007. India-born Nikesh Arora, Google’s former Chief Business Officer, was appointed president of Japan's SoftBank Corp in May this year and has been named as a potential successor to CEO Masayoshi Son. In a blog post yesterday, Page lauded Pichai for his work at the company and said he is "very fortunate" to have someone as "talented" as Pichai to head the new Google. "This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google. A key part of this is Sundar Pichai," Page said. Waxing eloquent about Pichai, Page said, "Sundar has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now, and I?ve been tremendously enjoying our work together".
"He has really stepped up since October of 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. And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google," Page said. Page noted that he has been spending quite a bit of time with Pichai, helping him and the company and would continue to do that.
"Google itself is also making all sorts of new products, and I know Sundar will always be focused on innovation - continuing to stretch boundaries. I know he deeply cares that we can continue to make big strides on our core mission toorganize the world's information. Recent launches like Google Photos and Google Now using machine learning are amazing progress," he added.