a joint duke university – uc berkeley study revealed that indian immigrants have founded more engineering and technology companies from 1995 to 2005 than immigrants from the uk, china, taiwan and japan combined. the percentage of silicon valley startups founded by indian immigrants has increased from 7% in 1999 to 15.5% in 2006, as reported in the 1999 study by annalee saxenian and her updated work in 2006 in collaboration with vivek wadhawa. indian americans are making their way to the top positions of almost every big technology company (google, facebook, microsoft, cisco, oracle, adobe, softbank, cognizant, sun microsystems, etc.) many of them came from very humble origins, for example the current google ceo "sundar pichai did not have the privilege of watching television or travelling by car during his childhood. born and raised in a middle class household, mr. pichai used to sleep with his brother in the living room of their two-room apartment that barely had any technology. despite facing these hardships of everyday life in india, pichai had a gleam in his eyes of sheer ambition and relentless pursuit."