Tamil film producer buys Sundar Pichai's ancestral home in Chennai

It’s a dream that has come true for C Manikandan, a Tamil film producer and real estate developer, when he got the chance to buy the ancestral house of Google CEO Sundar Pichai in Ashok Nagar in Chennai.

Manikandan immediately decided to snap up the property when it went up for sale. It was the house in which Sundar Pichai was born and raised up, and had lived there till he was 20 years. According to Manikandan, Pichai made the country proud and purchasing the house where the Indian-American born executive lived, will be a “proud achievement” in his life, said news reports.

However, Manikandan had to wait for four months before he could close the property deal  because the Google CEO’s father, RS Pichai was in the US at that time.

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Manikandan, who has built and delivered around 300 homes under his brand Chellappas Builders, was taken aback after his interactions with the Google CEO’s parents. He found them to be exceedingly humble.

He shared with the media that Sundar’s mother made filter coffee and his father offered him the documents at the first meeting. And he went on to add that he was “spellbound by their humility and humble approach.”

Also, it seems Pichai senior did not want Manikandan to use the Google CEO’s name to speed up the registration or transfer process. “In fact, his father waited for hours at the registration office, paid all necessary taxes before handing over the documents to me,” he said.

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Sundar Pichai was born and brought up in Chennai and left the city in 1989 to study Metallurgical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur. Manikandan said the property was fully razed down by Sundar’s father at his own cost and handed over the plot for development.

“Sundar’s father broke down for a few minutes while handing over the documents since this was his first property,” Manikandan added.

Manikandan will build a villa in this space and expects it to be completed in the next one and half years.