Chennai woke up and went into celebration mode on Tuesday when news broke that Sundar Pichai has been made Google’s CEO. Fiercely-competitive academically, he used to be a child with a passion “to be at the top,” recount schoolmates and family as the news of his elevation spread in the calm, tree-lined neighbourhood of Ashok Nagar in Chennai.

His father, an electrical engineer, had to save for three years to buy the family a new scooter, but made sure Pichai and his brother had the best education the family could afford, at Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan.

Sundar Pichai in School days:

A well-behaved, academically sound, unassuming student — that’s how teachers at Sundar Pichai’s alma mater Jawahar Vidyalaya Senior Secondary School in Ashok Nagar.

Pichai is the second person from Chennai to be chosen to head a global corporation after Indira Nooyi, chairperson and chief executive officer of American multinational food and beverage major PepsiCo.

Sundar Pichai is IIT-Kharagpur alumnus:

Pichai moved out of Jawahar Vidyalaya to join Vana Vani, a school inside the IIT-Madras campus to pursue his Plus Two under the Tamil Nadu State board syllabus.

Pichai’s name was registered as P Sundarajan when he was at IIT-Kharagpur. He was a 1993 batch student of the department of metallurgical and materials engineering.

But, just earlier this year, when a professor at IIT-KGP got a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter asking details about Pichai, the response was that there had been no student by that name.

Must Read: Sundar Pichai Travelled In CIty Buses, Had No TV During His Childhood

It was only later that Professor Sanat Kumar Roy realised that the journalist had been talking about the student who was then known as P Sundarajan, then a topper in the metallurgy department.

Two days ago during the annual convocation of IIT- KGP the institute awarded distinguish alumni award to Sundar Pichai. He was awarded B C Roy Silver Medal in 1993.

PhD at Stanford University

Sundar was recommended by his Professors at IIT to pursue PhD at Stanford. Sundar came to America to do an MS in Material Sciences and Engineering from Stanford, though he eventually dropped out.

Pichai worked with the engineering and product management divisions of semiconductor maker Applied Materials Inc. and as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co.

Pichai joined Google as its VP of product management in 2004:

In 2004, Pichai joined Google as its vice president of product management, where he led the team working on Google’s Chrome browser and operating system.

Pichai quickly began to receive more responsibility, however, taking on involvement with various Google search products including Firefox, Google Toolbar, Desktop Search, Gadgets, and Google Gears and Gadgets.

In September 2008, Pichai oversaw the successful launch of the Chrome web browser, and less than a year later, the web-based Chrome operating system for netbooks and desktop computers.

Also Read: What Helped Sundar Pichai Rise To Top

Pichai added another Google division to his portfolio in 2012 after Google Apps head Dave Girouard departed to start his own company, Upstart.

A year later, Pichai was put in charge of Android after Android co-founder and CEO Andy Rubin stepped down in March 2013.

Pichai was announced as the next CEO of Google on August 10, 2015 after previously being appointed Product Chief by current CEO Larry Page on 24 October, 2014.

Sundar Pichai’s Wikipedia page turns battleground over Schooling:

Google announcing Sundar Pichai as its new CEO not just broke every tech website in India, it started an editing war on his Wikipedia page. The big announcement was followed by an editing spree on Pichai’s Wikipedia page, with people altering the information to change the name of the school he attended in his hometown of Chennai.

To start with, the page said he had studied at Jawahar Vidyalaya and Vanavani. Minutes later, the page said that Pichai was an alumnus of the famed Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan (PSBB) School. The names of two other schools soon joined the race — GRT Mahalakshmi Vidyalaya and All Angels School.

July 30 – The first look at 01:11:

August 11 – A new school name, updated at 01:35:

August 11 – The fight continues at 02:59:

August 11 – The nth change, done at 03:23:

August 11 – And then some more by 04:01:

By Tuesday night, there were over 250 edits on the page.