IIT graduates are leading some of the biggest tech companies worldwide. In the battle of artificial intelligence (AI) among tech giants like Google and Microsoft, graduates from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are playing a key role. Microsoft’s ChatGPT, supported by IIT graduates, took an early lead in AI tools for consumers.
In response, with the help of an IIT graduate named Prabhakar Raghavan, Google launched Bard AI, giving tough competition to OpenAI.
Prabhakar Raghavan, the IIT graduate we’re talking about, is currently the Senior Vice President at Google. He oversees important Google products like Search, Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce, and Payments. Reports suggest that he received a salary of around Rs 300 crore from Google in 2022.
Before joining Google, Raghavan led Yahoo! Labs, where he was in charge of search and ad ranking. He later served as the Chief Strategy Officer. He also worked as the CTO at Verity and held various positions at IBM for 14 years, focusing on algorithms, data mining, and machine learning.
Raghavan, who grew up in Bhopal, studied at Campion School. His mother was a physics and math teacher. After school, he earned a Bachelor of Technology degree from IIT Madras and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Previously, he served as Vice President of Google Apps and Google Cloud, overseeing engineering, products, and user experience. Under his leadership, Google’s Apps business expanded from consumer apps to a major contributor to Google’s Cloud business. He also achieved over 1 billion monthly active users for Gmail and Drive, introducing machine intelligence features in G Suite, including Smart Reply, Smart Compose, and Drive Quick Access, leading to better user experiences.
