Google CEO Sundar Pichai grew up in Chennai, India, with little access to a phone -- let alone a computer or the internet. But it was this upbringing that helped show him just how powerful technology could be.
The Pichai family waited five years before they could get a telephone. When they did, neighbors would come over to make calls.
"It became a communal thing. People would come to call their kids," Pichai told CNN's Poppy Harlow in an exclusive interview for a new episode of Boss Files. "And so for me, it showed the power of what's possible with technology."
Pichai wouldn't own a dedicated computer until he moved to the United States and attended Stanford University on a scholarship. But then the rest was history.
He graduated from Stanford with a master's in engineering and later went on to get an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Pichai worked at Applied Materials and McKinsey before joining Google in 2004. There, he held a variety of roles, including overseeing Chrome, product chief of Google and head of the Android operating system. He became CEO in 2015.