News India Times
August 21, 2015
10
and Lakshmi Pichai are in the
U.S. as is his wife Anjali, a batch
mate of Pichai from Kharagpur,
and obviously they were over-
joyed at the success of Pichai
who is believed to have set his
eyes early on during the student
days to come to the United
States for higher studies.
A question that was doing
rounds in the SiliconValley and
elsewhere as to what makes
Indian-Americans, especially
those in hi-tech industries
achieve such success?
Vinod Dham, known as the
Father of Pentium processor
who worked for 16 years at Intel,
heading a group that designed
the company's best-selling
Pentium chip before founding
his own company, believes
Indians are inherently well-suit-
ed for leading these established
tech giants because of necessary
hands-on technical background
and capability to lead complex
projects and can deliver bottom
line results.
“By definition, the ones who
leave homes to come to distant
shores have the zeal and ambi-
tion to grow and to better their
future. This mindset enables
ease with which they focus on
future growth opportunities for
their existing businesses, an
important goal for these estab-
lished giants,” Dham, one of the
best known Indian American
faces in SiliconValley until the
arrival of the likes of Nadella,
said.
No wonder, according to
Inc.com quoting FullNetworth,
Sundar Pichai enjoys a net
worth of $150 million.
“Getting anything done in
India requires building relation-
ships and dealing with multiple
interfaces and personalities.
These traits become
very handy in the com-
plex world of technolo-
gy business where you
have to work with a
wide variety of entities,
from suppliers, buyers,
customers and even
competitors, to collabo-
rate for your success,”
Dham, who now is a
venture capitalist, said.
Venture capitalist
Venk Shukla, who holds
an MBA fromMIT
Sloan School of
Management, and cur-
rently the chairman of
TiE, had almost a simi-
lar take on the subject,
but said he does not
believe in traditional
perception that Indians
get to the top just
because they are tech-
nically savvy and have
good command over
English language.
“That is a whole bunch of
stereotyping. Of course, these
are necessary, but I feel the
main reason people like Nadella
and now Pichai have made it to
the top is because of their social
background and ability to han-
dle diversity which is very
important in compa-
nies like Google and
Microsoft that hire
people from all differ-
ent countries and cul-
tures,” he said.
Shukla explained
why he thinks so. “The
success of Indian peo-
ple, especially in tech
industry has less to do
with skills in English
language and clichés
like ‘only the best of
the best’ come to the
U.S. and all that. In my
mind while all these
matters to some
extent, one thing that
is underappreciated is
the fact that the tech-
nology industry is
extremely diverse that
attracts talents from
all over the world and
India is one of the only
two really diverse
countries in the world,
the other being the
U.S., that knows how to handle
diversity and manage them. By
growing up in India a person
instinctively learns early on in
life how to manage and make
the best of diversity and learn to
respect it,” he said.
Dham said that the Indian
way of upbringing has given
people a mindset to be able to
deal with the business uncer-
tainties and ups and down with
relative ease. “Keeping many
balls in the air, without drop-
ping the important ones is built
into our training from the chal-
lenges we face in growing up in
a 1.2B people nascent democra-
cy,” he said.
Shukla and others felt that it
is a tribute to companies like
Microsoft, Adobe and Google
that they spot talent and give
those opportunities to people
even though they look different,
talk different and have different
backgrounds.
“Indians know that people
are different, not inferior, and
not superior. People who come
from homogeneous societies
have to learn that thing in the
U.S. because when they come to
SiliconValley, they meet people
from different backgrounds, dif-
ferent religions and languages.
To Indians, this comes natural-
ly,” he said.
There might be some truth in
his observation as Pichai has
been known to be a person who
gets on very well with people in
Google and is a kind of team
player who can get things done
in his inimitable style.
Business Insider said quoting
Maarten Hooft, a partner at the
venture capital firm Quest
Venture Partners and who
worked at Google for six years
between 2006 and 2012, as say-
ing that Sundar is the guy who
can get visions of people like
Page translated.
“He can assemble the team,
he can appoint the right people,
and he’s the one that makes it
happen,” according to a
Business Insider report.
Said Mishra: “Pichai com-
mands very high respect within
Google. There has not been one
word of negativity about him,
not just within Google but even
from the larger tech community
here in the SiliconValley follow-
ing his appointment,” he said.
“The reason he is liked by
people is because of he is tech-
nically very smart and he has
wonderful peoples’ skills. He is
not overbearing and is a fine
human being. Most important
he gets along with people. Even
when you compare him with
Larry Page, I must say Pichai’s
style has been very different
from his predecessor. This Tamil
Brahmin obviously grew up with
traditional family values – learn-
ing to respect others, showing
humility, and yet holding on his
conviction – something most of
us Indian Americans grew up
with while in India.”
– that’s all you need to know
Cover Story
Top, Pichai with his parents in California
in 1997, when they came to visit him in
the U.S. for the first time. Left, Pichai
and his wife, Anjali. Right, Pichai in
Stanford University dorm in 1994.
Pichai on cover of Bloomberg
Businessweek in 2014.
Google's co-founders Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin, right, Brian Rakowski,
second from left, and Sundar Pichai during a conference
introducing Google Chrome, September 2008.
Reuters
Reuters
