A nearly three-year old video showing a man visiting his school maths teacher in Mysore after over two decades, is going viral online with captions misidentifying the man as Sundar Pichai - Google and Alphabet Inc's Indian-origin CEO.
The six-minute long video starts with a speaker standing at a podium talk about his aspirations to emulate his maths teacher Molly Abraham and then shows his trip to Mysore to see her. A nostalgic reunion between the two ensues.
The clip is going viral on WhatsApp and Facebook with a caption falsely identifying the man as Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
"Sunder Pichai Google CEO visiting his maths teacher after 27 years at her residence in Mysore. see humility💐💐💐", the text claims.
BOOM got the same video on its WhatsApp helpline from several readers with a request to fact-check the clip.
A verified YouTube channel Telugu Film Producers Council Official channel with more than 1 million subscribers shared the video with the same misleading caption. The archive is available here.
An archive of the post is available here.
We found several Facebook and Twitter users who shared the video with a similar caption. An archive of the post is available here.
FACT CHECK
BOOM did a keyword search with 'Ganesh Kohli,' the name band that appears at the beginning of the viral video, and the name of the teacher he mentions, 'Molly Abraham.'
The first Google search result directs you to Ganesh Kohli's website page, 'Teacher'. Kohli is the founder of the International Career and College Counseling (IC3), a company that offers school-based career and college guidance. It has a presence in the United States as well as India.
Kholi credits his teacher Molly Abraham for his success. An excerpt from the website says, "Ganesh was first inspired by his Math teacher in school, Mrs. Molly Abraham. He began teaching Mathematics in 1997 for a variety of students, and over time shifted focus to preparation for standardized tests such as GRE, GMAT and SAT."
The page had the same video posted from IC3 Movement's YouTube channel, titled 'Molly Teacher' on Sept 1, 2017.
Further, Ganesh Kohli has clarified on his social media accounts that he was the man paying a tribute to his maths teacher in the viral video, and it is not Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google or Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft.
BOOM has reached out to Kohli, who confirmed that it was him in the video. Kohli, who is based in Mumbai, told BOOM that he had studied under Molly Abraham when he was studying at SCDB high school in DN Nagar, Andheri West. Abraham moved to Mysore in 1996 after her retirement.
Moreover, according to news reports by The Hindu Business Line and Mumbai Mirror, Sundar Pichai grew up in Ashoknagar, Chennai and attended school till standard X at Jawahar Vidyalaya in Chennai along with his younger brother Sreenivasan. Pichai finished his schooling in Chennai before moving on to pursue his engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, in West Bengal.