Google CEO Sundar Pichai is close to achieving billionaire status, which would mark a rare milestone for a non-founder tech executive, Bloomberg reported.
His current net worth is nearly $1 billion, boosted by hefty stock awards and a 400% rally in Google's stock since he became CEO in 2015. Notably, Pichai completed 20 years at the tech giant in April.
It’s a remarkable rise for the native of Chennai, India, who grew up in a two-room apartment where he and his younger brother slept on the living-room floor.
During much of his childhood, the Pichais didn’t have a television or a car, he has said in interviews. At times, they didn’t even have running water.
The family got their first rotary telephone when he was 12, which he said introduced him to the conveniences of technology.
That, along with a healthy curiosity about his father’s job as an electrical engineer for the British conglomerate GEC, attracted the young Pichai to the tech industry.
He excelled at school, eventually landing a spot at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, where he studied engineering.
When he won a scholarship to Stanford University, his father withdrew $1,000 from the family’s savings — more than his annual salary — to cover the cost of Pichai’s plane ticket and other expenses.
After earning another advanced degree at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a stint as a consultant at McKinsey, he joined Google in 2004 as a product manager, leading development of major projects like the Google Toolbar and Google Chrome.