Last Saturday India reported its worst daily Covid cases, which hit the 400,000 mark for the first time while its death toll registered 3,689.
When the situation was getting from bad to worse, a number of tech leaders and billionaires around the world began to help India to contain the Covid. Thus, two giants in the tech field who are American-Indians came forward with funding and other assistance to help India.
Google Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai, one of the 100 Most Influential People in 2016 and 2020 according to Time magazine, announced that they will donate $18 million (Indian Rs.135 Crores) for medical supplies and other resources which will help communities in general while CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, another billionaire took to Twitter to say Microsoft would use its resources and technology to support India during the crisis. Nadella said in his twitter post that he was “heartbroken” by the situation in India and promised that his company would support Covid relief efforts:
“I am heartbroken by the current situation in India. I’m grateful that the US government is mobilizing to help. Microsoft will continue to use its voice, resources, and technology to aid relief efforts, and support the purchase of critical oxygen concentration devices.”
Sundar Pichai’s twitter post was as follows:
“Devastated to see the worsening Covid crisis in India. Google & Googlers are providing Rs 135 Crore in funding to @GiveIndia, @UNICEF for medical supplies, orgs supporting high-risk communities, and grants to help spread critical information.”
In addition, Pichai will be donating Indian Rs 5 Crore over and above Google’s contribution to relief efforts, a Google company spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, Amazon India also pledged to support through various ways that will help to tackle the oxygen and medical equipment shortage and requirements in the country.
While these developments are great to note, on the other hand, this reveals how powerful these Indian-origin tech leaders are. In fact, they are the biggest players behind the scene in world communication technology and the world economy. So it is worthwhile to look into their personal and business life.
Who is Sundar Pichai?
He is the CEO of Alphabet, Inc. and its subsidiary Google. His birth name is Pichai Sundararajan and was born on June 10, 1972 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Pichai’s mother, Lakshmi, was a stenographer, and his father, Regunatha Pichai, was an electrical engineer at GEC, the British conglomerate. His father also had a manufacturing plant that produced electrical components. Pichai grew up in a two-room apartment in Ashok Nagar, Chennai and had a Hindu upbringing.
According to Wikipedia, Pichai first earned his degree from IIT Kharagpur in metallurgical engineering. Moving to the United States, he attained an M.S. from Stanford University in materials science and engineering and further attained an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Siebel Scholar and a Palmer Scholar, respectively.
Pichai started his career as a materials engineer. Following a short stint at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., he joined Google in 2004, where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google’s client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive. In addition, he went on to oversee the development of other applications such as Gmail and Google Maps.
In 2010, Pichai also announced the open-sourcing of the new video codec VP8 by Google and introduced the new video format, WebM. The Chromebook was released in 2012. In 2013, Pichai added Android to the list of Google products that he oversaw.
This way, Pichai was selected to become the next CEO of Google on August 10, 2015, following Larry Page. On October 24, 2015, he stepped into the new position at the completion of the formation of Alphabet Inc., the new holding company for the Google company family. He was appointed to the Alphabet Board of Directors in 2017.
In December 2017, Pichai was a speaker at the World Internet Conference in China, where he said, “A lot of work Google does is to help Chinese companies. There are many small and medium-sized businesses in China who take advantage of Google to get their products to many other countries outside of China.”
Personal life
Pichai is married to Anjali Pichai, née Haryani, a chemical engineer from Kota, Rajasthan. They met as classmates at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Now the couple have two children. Pichai’s interests include football and cricket.
Who is Satya Nadella?
Satya Narayana Nadella was born on 19 August 1967, in Hyderabad of present-day Telangana into a Telugu-speaking Hindu family. His mother Prabhavati was a Sanskrit lecturer and his father, Bukkapuram Nadella Yugandhar, was an Indian Administrative Service officer of the 1962 batch.
Nadella attended the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet before receiving a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka in 1988. He then traveled to the US to study for an MSc in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, receiving his degree in 1990. Later, he received an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 1996.
Nadella worked at Sun Microsystems as a member of its technology staff before joining Microsoft in 1992. Now, he is the CEO of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. Before becoming CEO, he was the executive vice president of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise group, responsible for building and running the company’s computing platforms.
As Wikipedia mentions, Nadella worked as the senior vice-president of Research and Development (R&D) for the Online Services Division and vice-president of the Microsoft Business Division. Later, he was made the president of Microsoft’s $19 billion Server and Tools Business and led a transformation of the company’s business and technology culture from client services to cloud infrastructure and services. He has been credited for helping bring Microsoft’s database, Windows Server and developer tools to its Azure cloud.
Since Nadella became CEO, Microsoft stock tripled by September 2018, with a 27% annual growth rate. Now he works as a member of the Board of Directors, Starbucks, a member of the Board of Trustees, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and as a member of the Board of Trustees, University of Chicago.
In 2018, he was a Time 100 honoree. In 2019, Nadella was named Financial Times Person of the Year and Fortune magazine Businessperson of the Year. In 2020, Nadella was recognized as Global Indian Business Icon at CNBC-TV18’s India Business Leader Awards in Mumbai.
Personal life
In 1992, Nadella married Anupama, the daughter of his father’s IAS batchmate. She was his junior at Manipal pursuing a B.Arch in the Faculty of Architecture. The couple have three children, a son and two daughters, and live in Clyde Hill and Bellevue, Washington.
Nadella is an avid reader of American and Indian poetry. He also nurses a passion for cricket, having played on his school team. Nadella and his wife Anupama are part of the ownership group of Seattle Sounders FC, a Major League Soccer club.
And he has also authored a book titled Hit Refresh that explores his life, his career in Microsoft and how he believes technology will shape the future. He announced that the profits from the book would go to Microsoft Philanthropies and through that to nonprofit organizations.