Google CEO Sundar Pichai made nearly $200 million in 2016

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NEW YORK: Indian American Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, got nearly $199.7 million in compensation in 2016, double the amount he made in 2015, according to a filing Friday from Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

Pichai’s base pay was a ‘pittance’, only $650,000. However, the real moolah was in the form of stock award for $198.7 million.

Pichai’s net worth as of December, 2015 was $650 million. He is an alum of IIT Kharagpur, Stanford University and Wharton School of Business.

Pichai, a longtime Google executive, took over as CEO as part of a corporate restructuring in 2015. Google has boosted sales from its core advertising and YouTube business, while also investing in machine learning, hardware and cloud computing, under Pichai’s leadership, reported CNN.

In 2016, Google unveiled new smartphones, a virtual reality headset, a router, and a voice controlled smart speaker similar to the Amazon Echo.

Google’s “other revenues,” a category that includes hardware and cloud services, hit nearly $3.1 billion in the most recent quarter, a gain of about 50% from the same quarter a year earlier.

Alphabet’s stock has soared this year, pushing it above a $600 billion market cap this week for the first time, reported CNN.

Pichai, an avid fan of cricket and soccer, has come a long way from his early days in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, where he grew up in a two-room apartment. He now lives in Los Altos Hills, in a home designed by Robert Swatt.