Born to Malayalee dad and mom—a chemical engineer father and a instructor mom who emigrated from Sri Lanka—George and Thomas Kurian have been the youngest of 4 siblings. A pair of twins, George and Thomas, grew up in Bengaluru and studied at St Joseph Boys Excessive College. For his or her commencement, the brothers joined IIT Madras. Each stayed on the premier engineering school for six months earlier than lastly shifting to Princeton College on scholarships. Whereas Thomas graduated in electrical engineering summa cum laude, George secured the second place.
The similarity between the 2 doesn’t cease right here. At current, Thomas Kurian is the CEO of Google Cloud, whereas George Kurian is the CEO of NetApp. That is the story of the brothers who’re at present among the many most profitable sibling duos in Silicon Valley.
Thomas Kurian—the top of Google Cloud
Crossing seven seas, as they are saying, arriving on the US bewildered and excited the Kurian brothers in a very good nervous means. A lot later in his profession, Thomas appears to have recounted his expertise of visiting an American sandwich store and being completely blown by the truth that he might select from large choices for bread.
An excellent pupil, Thomas joined Mckinsey & Co. after school. He was a advisor serving purchasers within the software program, monetary companies, and telecommunications industries at this agency. He labored at Mckinsey for six years and in addition pursued an MBA from Stanford Graduate College of Enterprise as an Arjay Miller Scholar on the time.
The Oracle stint, the place he spent 22 years, has been one of many main highlights of Thomas’ profession. Within the preliminary years, Thomas held product administration and growth roles—main as much as his first government place because the vice chairman of the corporate’s e-Enterprise division. Following that, he took over the Oracle Fusion Middleware product household—main it to develop into the trade’s greatest middleware product suite. His different achievements embrace making an utility server software program, Oracle’s fastest-growing enterprise.
Later, in his position because the president of product growth, Thomas led over 3000 product growth tasks and was answerable for the supply of merchandise like Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware, amongst others. Throughout this time, he additionally grew to become the fifth highest-paid tech government in 2010. Nonetheless, Thomas’ affiliation with Oracle got here to an finish in 2018 following an alleged fallout with Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder.
He then joined Google’s cloud division. Quickly after assuming this place, Thomas made some high-level hires which included Rob Enslin, the president of the cloud enterprise group at SAP PE. He modified the technique of his crew to carry give attention to software program packages. Together with adopting applied sciences like machine studying and knowledge analytics, he additionally began promoting Google’s different merchandise like Android and Maps.
Taking over his former employer Oracle straight, Thomas made it a precedence to strengthen Google Cloud’s maintain within the database market. All these efforts and a few extra over time have ensured the regular progress of the corporate.
NetApp’s George Kurian
George began his profession with Oracle, the place he labored for 5 years, shifting as much as the ranks of a senior supervisor. Like Thomas, George additionally pursued an MBA diploma from the Stanford College Graduate College of Enterprise. However the similarity doesn’t finish but. In 1996, when his brother Thomas moved to Oracle, apparently, across the identical time, Thomas additionally moved from Oracle to McKinsey.
At McKinsey, George labored for 4 years because the senior engagement supervisor earlier than shifting to Akamai the place he labored for 3 years. Subsequent, he joined Cisco, the place he headed completely different models like product administration and technique, utility supply enterprise unit, utility networking and switching know-how group.
George then joined NetApp in 2011 and have become the corporate CEO in 2015. He has served within the publish of government vice chairman of Product operations and he was answerable for the technique and growth of the corporate’s product and answer portfolio. Previous to that, he was the senior vice chairman of the Knowledge ONTAP Group, overseeing the event of the ONTAP working system.
With such high-flying careers and a fats paycheck, the Kurian brothers are simply among the many most profitable siblings within the tech world. From a small city in Kerala, India, to Silicon Valley, the brothers have charted fairly a outstanding skilled trajectory.
