Former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Conservative MP Rishi Sunak is all set to become the UK's prime minister after former PM Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt pulled out of the race. Sunak will be Britain's first PM of Indian origin.
Rishi Sunak is the son of a pharmacist mother and a National Health Service (NHS) general practitioner father. He was born in Southhampton and his grandparents are from Punjab-- they migrated from East Africa in the 1960s.
After graduating from Oxford, Sunak went to Stanford on a Fulbright scholarship. There he studied MBA. It is at Stanford that he met his wife Akshata Murty, daughter of Infosys founder Narayan Murthy. The couple got married in 2009 and have two children-- Krishna and Anoushka.
Sunak has worked in firms like Goldman Sachs, The Children's Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners. He has also worked for Catamaran Ventures, an investment firm owned by his father-in-law.
In 2015, Sunak became a member of parliament from Richmond in Yorkshire. Sunak quickly rose through the ranks in the Conservative party. A Brexiteer, Sunak was among Boris Johnson's supporters in his 'leave EU' campaign. In February 2020, Sunak was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.
While he was widely appreciated for his economic package supporting employees and businesses during the Covid pandemic, he was criticised for not providing enough cost-of-living support to households.