Introducing Thomas Kurian, a former IIT student and Google employee who dropped out but has surpassed the net worth of his IIT graduate boss, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Sundar Pichai, celebrated as the highest-paid Indian employee, with a staggering compensation of $226 million in 2022, leads a company valued at $1.17 trillion, but Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud, has managed to amass a net worth reportedly exceeding Rs 15,000 crore.
Born in Kerala and an alumnus of Bengaluru’s St Joseph’s Boys High School, Thomas Kurian, alongside his identical twin brother George Kurian, initially pursued studies at IIT Madras before making the pivotal decision to relocate to the United States, securing admissions at Princeton University.
Equipped with an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, Kurian started his career at McKinsey and Company. Following a fruitful six-year tenure at McKinsey, Thomas Kurian moved to Oracle, where he worked for 22 years, moving up the corporate ladder, and eventually taking charge of a 35,000-person team in 32 countries.
2018 saw him leave Oracle due to disagreements with co-founder Larry Ellison. After that, Kurian became the CEO of Google.
Thomas Kurian is credited with bringing Google Cloud back to life by implementing strategic changes and placing a strong emphasis on customer service. Increasing the pay of Google Cloud salespeople was one of his noteworthy initiatives to boost their motivation.
He took over as CEO of Google Cloud in 2018, leading the company to success and surpassing his colleague Sundar Pichai, an IIT graduate, in net worth.
