Here's Why Satya Nadella & Sundar Pichai Deserve To Be Awarded Padma Bhushan

The Indian government has announced that it would be awarding Padma Bhushan to Microsoft Chairman-CEO Satya Nadella and Google-Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pichai this year, among 17 other awardees.

Reuters

Also Read: From Google To IBM: Indian Origin CEOs Who Are Running American Big Tech

The third highest civilian award in the nation is being awarded to them for their stellar service to the field of IT.

And for the contributions made by the, they both have been on, they truly deserve to be honoured.

Both, coming from humble beginnings have today taken the reigns of one of the top 5 companies across the globe.

Sundar Pichai

Pichai (full-name Pichai Sundarajan) was born in Tamilnadu, in a two-room apartment in Ashok Nagar, Chennai.

His mother, Laxmi was a stenographer by profession, whereas his father, an electrical engineer. He has received a degree in metallurgical engineering from IIT Kharagpur, and later an M.S. from US¡¯s Stanford University in materials science and engineering. He has further obtained a Master¡¯s degree in Business Administration from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Also Read: Not Metaverse, Sundar Pichai Feels Google¡¯s Future Is Internet Search And AI

Reuters

Pichai helped develop one of the world's most popular internet browser

His career started as a materials engineer. However after a brief stint at firm McKinsey and Co. Pichai joined Google in 2004 and since then he has been instrumental in the development of Google Chrome, ChromeOS and the popular Android OS that we all love today among other products.

He also worked on making Android easily accessible for all, with the Android One initiative, making affordable Android devices when smartphones were just taking off in India. Today India is one of the largest smartphone markets in the world.

He became the CEO of the search engine giant Google in 2015 and in just four years, became the CEO of Google's parent company, Alphabet, in 2019.

Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella was born in Hyderabad, India. He completed his bachelor's in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka, before moving to the US to get an MS degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Also Read: Satya Nadella Becomes Chairman Of Microsoft: Here¡¯s What This Means

He joined Microsoft in 1992 after a stint at Sun Microsystems. He has served as an executive vice president of Microsoft¡¯s cloud and enterprise group.

Forbes

Pulling Microsoft out of the black hole

When he took the reins of the company from Steve Balmer in 2014, Microsoft wasn't doing so good, with several Microsoft projects like Windows Phone, Windows OS and even Xbox really suffering.

It was Satya Nadella's push towards cloud computing -- Azure -- that actually helped Microsoft reach the level it is at today, with Azure also contributing a major chunk of revenue. He also helped users switch from PC-based Microsoft Office to cloud-based Office 365 which is popular not just among home users but also enterprise users. In 2021, he was named Chairman of Microsoft.

Other Padma Bhushan awardees this year include Tata Sons chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran and the heads of the nation¡¯s two largest Covid-19 vaccine makers - Cyrus Poonawalla of Serum Institute of India (SII) and Krishna Ella and Suchitra Ella of Bharat Biotech.

What do you think about Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella being bestowed with this national Indian honour? Let us know in the comments below, and keep reading Indiatimes.com for the latest science and technology news.