Indian American Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai and Madhur Jaffery get Padma Bhushan

Nadella and Pichai to be honored in the trade and industry category, Jaffery to get the award in the “culinary” field.

Indian American technology leaders Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai and actor and chef Madhur Jaffery will be conferred Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian honor, the Government of India announced on Tuesday, on the eve of the country’s 73^rd Republic Day.

Nadella, the chief executive officer of Microsoft, and Pichai, the CEO of Google, are being honored for their contributions in the “trade and industry” category. Jaffery will receive the award in the “culinary” category.

The three are among the 17 individuals who will be honored with Padma Bhushan this year.

Besides Padma Bhushan, the government also announced names of four Padma Vibhushans, 17 Padma Bhushans, and 107 Padma Shris.

READ: Indian American Narinder Singh Kapany posthumously conferred Padma Vibhushan (November 10, 2021)

Nadella became the CEO of Microsoft in 2014 after its founder and CEO Bill Gates stepped down.

A seasoned executive, the Indian American has been working with the Seattle-based company for almost two decades. After a brief tenure at Sun Microsystems, the 54-year-old Hyderabad native joined the firm in 1992 as a program manager in the Windows Developer Relations department and climbed through the ranks to become the head of the company’s cloud computing division.

Nadella completed his high school from the Hyderabad Public School and received a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communications engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka. He came to the United States to do his master’s degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He earned another master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Pichai took over as the CEO of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, in 2019.

Born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, he earned a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Pichai came to the United States to enroll for a master’s degree at Stanford University. He also earned an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Before joining Google in 2004, Pichai worked at Applied Materials in engineering and product management and at McKinsey & Company in management consulting. He was in charge of product management and innovation for a number of client software products at the time, including Google Chrome, Chrome OS, and Google Drive.

Jaffrey, 88, is considered one of the best-known authorities on Indian food outside of India.

Born in Delhi, she moved to Britain in 1953 on an acting scholarship.

Since the publication of her first book, An Invitation to Indian Cookery, in 1973, she has written more than a dozen books.

“When I wrote my first cookbook, I actually felt that I knew very little about cooking — I just started cooking at the age of 20 myself,” she wrote in a 2003 BBC article. “So what I said to my editor was that I was going to do a book on the food that I know, that I cook myself. And what I know is the food of Delhi.”

Jaffrey is also an award-winning actor who has featured in more than 20 films.

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