After Two-Year wait, Sundar Pichai bestowed with alumnus award from IIT-KGP

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google with the IIT Kharagpur students during an interaction on Thursday.

SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — After being selected to receive IIT-Kharagpur’s prestigious Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2015, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai was finally able to pick up the award, nearly two years later, on Thursday.

“Sundar Pichai was conferred his Distinguished Alumnus Award in the Board Room of IIT Kharagpur on January 5, 2017. The award was given to him at the 2015 convocation but he was unable to come and receive it in person at that time,” IIT Director PP Chakrabarti said in a Facebook post late Thursday.

Pichai made his first visit to the campus in 23 years while on holiday in his home nation, where he held interactive sessions with current students, visited his old hostel, Nehru Hall, and other places on campus he used to frequent. During his conversation with current students, Pichai gave a tell-all about his college girlfriend, his studies, and yes, even playing hooky from the classroom.

Pichai was asked about his wife, whom he was classmates with at IIT-Kharagpur.

“Anjali is my wife and she was my classmate. She lived in S.N. Hall, that was the only girls’ hostel then. I hope there are a few more now. It wasn’t very easy. If you had to get someone at the girls hostel, you had to walk in the front and request someone there to go call them. And so they would go and loudly say, “Anjali, Sundar is here for you”. So it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.”

On India’s centrality to Google’s plans, Pichai said the technology giant was training some two million people to develop mobile applications. India has the potential to emerge as a powerhouse in software development, but it will take “a few more years to realize that potential,” he said.

In India, Google is working on launching its services in as many languages as possible, he said. Further, it is working with the government and state-owned enterprises such as RailTel Corp. to expand access to the Internet.