When Google’s Sundar Pichai Greeted His Friend with ‘Abbey Saale’

This is Pichai’s first visit to the Kharagpur campus, where he studied 23 years ago.

Sundar Pichai entertained a number of selfie requests during his visit to the IIT Kharagpur campus. (Photo: The Quint)

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is one of IIT Kharagpur’s best known alumni. Students of the varsity were in for a treat on Thursday when Pichai visited the campus and interacted with them.

Pichai, who hails from Chennai, looked right at home at the fireside chat at the Tagore Open Air Auditorium, with over 3,000 students thronging to catch a glimpse of him.

The institute organised the screening of an archival montage of Pichai’s days at the IIT and the Google CEO reminisced fondly about his college days.

Pichai, who returned to the campus after 23 years, got candid about struggling to learn Hindi and let students in on one of his mischievous adventures during his time at the college.

I came from Chennai. I learnt Hindi in school but I never spoke it much. So, just listening to how people are speaking, One day, there was someone in the mess and I had to call him. I called him ‘abbey saale’. In the first couple of weeks, I thought you call people that way. Next thing I know is the folks in the mess were quite upset and I think they temporarily closed down the mess. 

Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google

Sundar Pichai answering questions. (Photo: The Quint)

Pichai confessed that he would often score Cs at IIT Kharagpur. When asked about his aspirations, he said:

Always wanted to build computing products that can be of help to many users. 

Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google

He also shared his experiences at Google, and encouraged the students to look past their failures.

At Google, we work on things that people will use everyday. 

Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google

Talking about India’s tremendous smartphone potential, he said that he hoped cheaper smartphones would soon be a reality. Entry-level smartphones should be priced around $30, he said.

“India is a great place to be in the next 20 years,” he said.