49-year-old YouTube Engineering Chief, Venkat Panchapakesan on Monday evening, May 11, passed away following months-long battle with cancer in Silicon Valley. Venkat, known as Venky, by his family and friends, bade farewell to the world, after contributing immensely in the field of Information Technology.
Venkat, who hailed from Coimbatore, accomplished his BE in Electronics from the Coimbatore Institute of Technology (CIT). He left for U.S. in the 1990s to pursue his MS in Computer Engineering from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.
After a stint of ten years at Yahoo!, Venkat joined Google and in June, the same year, he was chosen as the engineering head for YouTube, reporting directly to the company\'s CEO, Susan Wojcicky.
In a statement, Wojcicki said, \"Venkat was a deeply admired leader of our engineering team and we are extremely saddened by his passing. He was loved by the people who worked with him and will be missed by everyone who knew him. Our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time.\"
Indeed, it was his personal warmth as much as his professional excellence that his friends and family remember him for—what his cousin, Chandar Pattabhiram, calls the \"right mix of ability and humility.\"
\"He accomplished a lot without amplifying his success, always with a clear sense of direction on where he wanted to go and the grit and determination to get there,\" Pattabhiram recalled. \"He was a go-getter, but he was an even bigger go-giver, always generous with his time and money for helping people.\"