Meet This Indian Who Is Likely To Be The Highest Paid CEO In US While two of his bosses - Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Presidents of American conglomerate Alphabet Inc(the parent company of Google) - draw a salary of one dollar, Sundar Pichai's remuneration package has doubled in two years from what it was in 2015.

By Komal Nathani

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Facebook; Sundar Pichai

His contemporaries admire him and his juniors aspire to be like him, but Google CEO Sundar Pichai is beyond anyone's reach, moving fast and far ahead.

India-born Pichai is likely to become the highest paid CEO in the US this year with his humongous, annual pay package. While two of his bosses — Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Presidents of American conglomerate Alphabet Inc(the parent company of Google) — draw a salary of one dollar, Pichai's remuneration package has doubled in two years from what it was in 2015.

As the chief of one of the world's biggest search engines, Pichai received $199.7 million in compensation for 2016. This marks his third-straight year of getting nine-digit pay packet, a one-of-a-case in the industry.

Alphabet Inc's profit margins have beaten Wall Street this year at $5.43 billion, a rise by 29 per cent from its previous years. Media reports suggested that the company maintained its position as a top seller of internet advertising.

Since 2015, when Pichai joined Google, he has kept artificial intelligence and cloud computing at the forefront to scale up the sales and revenue figures.

In fact, in 2016, tech giants like IBM, Facebook, Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc. announced a partnership with AI to design AI technologies and make it the best in the world.

In an interactive session with students from his alma mater, IIT Kharagpur, on January 5, 2017, Pichai revealed his plans to work in India. He reminisced his days on the campus and regaled a gallery of pupils with tales of his days as a student.

"Advance machine learning will make big difference in many fields. We recently published a paper on how machine learning can help diagnose diabetic retinopathy. It's the major cause of blindness in the world. But, by using advanced machine learning we can detect it pretty early and accurately," Pichai pointed out in the session.

He also talked about the role of Google in digitization.

"In India, our main area of focus is to bring noticeable, positive changes and for that we need to make Google work in as many languages as possible."

The largest wing of Alphabet Inc, Google has boosted sales from its core advertising, despite YouTube's recent ad boycott. The company has reportedly invested in machine learning, hardware and cloud computing this year.

Alphabet Inc's stock has soared this year, pushing it above a $600 billion-market cap in the last week of April, stated a media report.

Komal Nathani

Former Correspondent, Entrepreneur Asia Pacific

A firm believer of hard work and patience. Love to cover stories that hold a potential to change the momentum of business world. Currently, a part of all-women web team of Entrepreneur’s Asia Pacific edition to jig the wheel of business journalism!

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