Tracing the Lucknow origins of Youtube's new CEO Neal Mohan through his teachers and mates

YouTube has a new CEO and the news is making a bunch of people in Lucknow grin ear to ear. mid-day chats up Neal Mohan’s classmates and teachers to put together a picture of the introvert everyone knew would strike big

You’d be forgiven for assuming that the top boss of global online video sharing platform YouTube, is a social media addict. But, irony thy name is Neal Mohan. The newly appointed CEO of a business that generated $28.8 billion in 2021 is determined to challenge definitions. Mohan is only seldom active on two social media platforms, Twitter and LinkedIn. He remains largely hidden from the public eye. The 49-year-old, who took over from Susan Wojcicki who served the parent company Google for 25 years, was until last week its Chief Product Officer. 

Mohan was born in Lucknow to an engineer father Dr Aditya Mohan and mother Deepa, and spent his early years in the US where his father was pursuing a PhD in soil testing from Purdue University, Indiana. But fate brought Mohan back to Lucknow in 1986, along with family, and he joined the seventh standard at St Francis’ College (SFC), an educational institution with a legacy dating back to 1885. He schooled here till Class XII before joining Stanford University for a BSc in Electrical Engineering. 

Professor Nishi Pandey returns to St Francis’ College, Lucknow, for the mid-day shoot and remembers Mohan as “conscientious and trustworthy”. Pic/Ajay Kumar

Former proctor of Lucknow University and head of its English and Modern European languages department, Professor Nishi Pandey was Mohan’s class teacher in Class IX, and also taught him English for a year at school. “He was the class monitor of IX-C,” she says without a moment’s hesitation when we dial her in Lucknow. “He stood out for his gravitas which boys that age don’t usually display,” she says. While Professor Pandey taught at SFC for just that year, she remembers Mohan clearly as the “conscientious, trustworthy and serious boy who would responsibly fulfil all duties given to him”. Teachers, she says, tend to hold onto memories of those students who were either “badmaash” or responsible.

“His Hindi was a bit anglicised,” she smiles, “maybe because he had just got back from the US, but he studied hard and improved. Sometimes, when fellow students would tease him for his spoken Hindi, he’d laugh them off.” At a parent-teachers meeting, Mohan’s mother approached Pandey with the same concern. “I assured her that her son, because of his ability to be focused, would get better with time. And he did.”

(Second row from front, first from left) Neal Mohan in a group photo of Class IX students at St Francis’ College, Lucknow. Nishi Pandey is seated centre in the first row. Pic Courtesy/Nishi Pandey

Pradeep Bhargava was Mohan’s class teacher in class VII, and calls him the “shy guy, not very fluent in Hindi, but bright and a quick learner.”

When news of Mohan’s achievement reached those who knew him from eons ago—thousands of miles away, at school and in the neighbourhood of River Bank Colony where he lived—felt a personal sense of joy. 

Former joint secretary of Old Franciscan’s Association (OFA) and its coordinator since 2014, Manoj Kriplani, although a year junior to Mohan in school, does not remember having an interaction with him at the time. “He was not very out there, but we are ecstatic about his achievement. Everyone at SFC is proud that somebody like him studied in the same school as them,” he says. 

The OFA’s private Facebook page has been buzzing with comments since. One Vibhav Jain writes that Mohan is his mother’s first cousin and by that destiny, his “mama ji”. The post references memories of his mother and the Mohans of River Bank Colony, while Jain calls himself just a “proud relative seeking inspiration from such a great person”. 

Jain’s mother writes, “Neal, Kapil and Anuj were the three sons of my maternal uncle Aditya Mohan. Their father my mama ji [Aditya Mohan] was a graduate of IIT Kharagpur who went to US to pursue his PhD from Purdue University. Feeling homesick, he returned to India and initiated a venture in soil testing. That was the time when Gomti Nagar [now a posh residential and commercial area in Lucknow] was being taken up for habitation. Mama was the person who was given the task of soil testing in the initial phase of the Gomti Nagar settlement.”

She also mentions Mohan’s younger brother, Anuj, an equally outstanding student who followed his brother to the US and joined MIT. “But destiny had something else in store for him. He left us at a very early age due to an accident. [The] youngest brother Kapil also completed his education at SFC and continued further education in the US.” Jain then writes that while he has not had the chance to meet his uncle, he remembers visiting his home. “Nana ji [Neal Mohan’s father] was an intelligent gentleman who passed on his stamp collection [it has many collectibles from my mamas] and some of mama’s childhood toys/board games as well, to me”.

A friend from school we contacted, who is now a senior cardiologist practising in Lucknow, requests anonymity and shares that Mohan’s rise to success was a foregone conclusion. “Even as a child, he was a private person,” recalls the surgeon. “We were a couple of friends who were thick; we played cricket, and studied together,” he remembers. “He was a gentle, intelligent soul and among the top five per cent in class academically.”

After acquiring a BSc degree in 1996, Mohan continued to work in the US and joined Accenture, before securing a senior position at DoubleClick Inc, an American advertisement company that provided internet ad services, which was a growing sector back then. He then enrolled himself in the MBA-General Management programme at Stanford, and worked with a few tech firms before joining Google in 2008. 

According to media reports, in 2011, Twitter made Mohan an offer to improve its product line-up. As a counter, Google offered $100 million in stock grants to retain him.

Another friend from school, Shantanu Kumar, who works as a management consultant in the education sector, tells mid-day that he was among the first to befriend a shy Mohan when he joined school. “He did very well in the Board exams even though his Hindi was a hiccup initially. I remember seeing him often reading in the library,” says Kumar, who last had a chat with Mohan in the days of Orkut. “In school he was an avid listener, inquisitive and maintained a low profile... traits that have stayed with him,” says Kumar. 

Also Read: Neal Mohan for YouTube: Why top tech giants are hiring Indian-origin CEOs in the US?

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