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These Indians have made it to the top at Google

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 13:15 IST
A view of Google's Zurich office in Switzerland.

Indians form a considerable chunk of Google's more than 53,000 employees, with some of them in top jobs.

Let's take a look at seven Indian-origin people in prominent positions at the Internet search giant.

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These Indians have made it to the top at Google

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 13:15 IST
Nikesh Arora.

Nikesh Arora

Position: Senior Vice-President and Chief Business Officer

He oversees all revenue and customer operations, as well as marketing and partnerships. Since joining Google in 2004, he has held several positions with the company. Most recently, he led Google's global direct sales operations. He also developed and managed the company's operations in the European, Middle Eastern and African markets and was responsible for creating and expanding strategic partnerships in those regions for the benefit of Google's growing number of users and advertisers.

Prior to joining Google, Arora was chief marketing officer and a member of the management board at T-Mobile Europe.

He holds a master's degree from Boston College and an MBA from Northeastern University, both of which were awarded with distinction. He also holds the CFA designation. In 1989, Nikesh graduated from the Institute of Technology in Varanasi, India with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering.

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These Indians have made it to the top at Google

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 13:15 IST
Sundar Pichai.

Sundar Pichai

Position: Google Android chief

He joined Google in 2004, where he lead the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive.

He went on to oversee the development of different apps like Gmail and Google Maps. On November 19, 2009, Pichai gave a demonstration of Chrome OS.

He received his Bachelors in Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and was awarded an Institute Silver Medal.

He holds an MS from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Siebel Scholar.

On March 13, 2013, Pichai added Android to the Google products he oversees.

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These Indians have made it to the top at Google

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 13:15 IST
Amit Singhal.

Amit Singhal

Position: Senior Vice-President and Google Fellow

He runs Google's core search quality department. He and his team are responsible for the Google search algorithms.

According to New York Times, Singhal is the master of what Google calls its "ranking algorithm" - the formulas that decide which web pages best answer each user's question.

As a reward for his rewrite of the search engine in 2001, Amit was named a "Google Fellow". In 2011, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. Fortune magazine named Singhal one of the smartest people in tech. The same year, Singhal was given the Outstanding Achievement in Science and Technology Award at The Asian Awards.

Born in Jhansi, Amit received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in computer science from IIT Roorkee in 1989. He continued his computer science education in the United States, and received an MS degree from University of Minnesota Duluth in 1991. Singhal  continued his studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and received a PhD in 1996.

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These Indians have made it to the top at Google

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 13:15 IST
Vic Gundotra.

Vic Gundotra

Position: Senior Vice-President, Engineering (Man behind Google+)

Before joining Google, he was a general manager at Microsoft. He joined Microsoft in 1991 and eventually became General Manager of Platform Evangelism. His duties included promoting Microsoft's APIs and platforms to independent developers and helping to develop a strategy for Windows Live online services to compete with Google's web-based software applications.

Gundotra joined Google in June 2007. His responsibilities include Google's mobile phone applications, and its developer efforts, including OpenSocial, Google Gadgets, Google Gears, and the more than 40 product APIs Google exposes

It was reported on Gigaom that he is considered to be Google's Social Czar. He is apparently known to be the man behind Google+.

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These Indians have made it to the top at Google

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 13:15 IST
Krishna Bharat.

Krishna Bharat

Position: Principal Scientist (Man behind Google News)

He leads a team developing Google's news product. Among other projects, he opened the Research & Development center at Bangalore.

He is the creator of Google News, a service that automatically indexes over 25,000 news websites in more than 25 languages to provide a summary of the News resources. Bharat created Google News in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks to keep himself abreast of the developments.

Since then, it has been a popular offering from Google's services. Google News was one of Google's first endeavours beyond offering just plain text searches on its page.

Bharat grew up in Bangalore. He completed his schooling from St Joseph's Boys' High School in Bangalore, and received an undergraduate degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He subsequently received a Ph.D from Georgia Tech in Human Computer Interaction.

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These Indians have made it to the top at Google

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 13:15 IST
Lalitesh Katragadda.

Lalitesh Katragadda

Position: Heads Google's research for emerging markets, which includes India

He is the Indian who wrote Google Map Maker. Currently Katragadda says that he ensures barriers such as language do not prevent the millions of new users from getting online and making the most of what companies like Google have to offer, according to The Economic Times.

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These Indians have made it to the top at Google

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 13:15 IST
Manik Gupta.

Manik Gupta

Position: Senior Product Manager, Google Maps

He used to work as a product manager on Google Map Maker, a product available in 180 countries worldwide, including the United States. He was also responsible for launching several features on Google Maps and Local search in India.

He has an MBA from Indian School of Business, Hyderababd, and attended Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, as an undergraduate student.