This is India's moment to shine, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) SATYA NADELLA, who is on a four-day visit to India after a three-year hiatus, took to social networking platform LinkedIn to share his excitement about coming back to India and “meeting innovators and changemakers”.

“It’s fantastic to be back in India this week…,” he said in his post on Wednesday. Credited with bringing Microsoft back from the brink of irrelevance, Nadella believes this is India’s moment to shine - not only in contributing towards digital technology but policy as well.

Voted the ‘most underrated’ CEO for the sixth consecutive year, Nadella has quietly but effectively transformed Microsoft since he took over from Steve Ballmer in 2014.

He says the confidence and dynamism he is seeing in India are very different.

Some excerpts based on a short interaction Nadella had with the media on the sidelines of Microsoft’s Future Ready Summit in Bengaluru.

‘This is India’s moment’

The sense of confidence, energy, and dynamism I see in India on this visit is very different. Especially in the context of what’s happening across the globe. 

I have said this earlier too: what’s happening with digital public goods in India is astonishing. I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere else in the world. Building digital public goods is one part. Consistently raising the bar on how private enterprises can still add tonnes of value is exemplary. 

It has built a virtuous cycle of digital public goods and consistently pushes the envelope by allowing private enterprises to increase competition, reducing citizens’ transactional costs, and is further reinforced by government policies.  

I feel this is India’s moment. India is taking the lead to contribute towards not just digital technology, but policy as well. I think that story needs to be written so that everyone else can benefit from it. 

Additionally, India’s leadership of the Group of Twenty is a great moment. We, at Microsoft, want to be a part of this.

‘Make in India, for the world’

We are making in India. We have in India our second-largest employee base. More importantly, we are investing our capital in India and building data centres. We have three data regions. A fourth one is coming up. These are massive investments and growing rapidly. We are no longer just a software company. 

It’s about making in India, for the world. This third phase is what I am excited about, especially if you are an entrepreneur and scaling.

When we have some inflationary forces, we need world-class technology that can act as a deflationary force. We want to be the infrastructure providers for it. We want to be the developer amplifiers for it. We will build every part of our stack to help give that leverage.

Everybody wants a lower transactional cost and the latest innovation in every economy.

‘Technology can maximise social impact’

Artificial intelligence is clearly the future. It is a trend we will be talking about in years to come. 

Of course, the big thing is not just about technology breakthroughs, but how it’s applied to the real things that have an impact. It is show time for all of us in digital technology. The use of technology for the sake of technology is over. Let’s now make it useful in the context of social impact.

‘Staying on the right side of the curve’

It is flipped when it comes to India. India today is a mainstream market for us. We build in India and design in India with customers and partners being the focus. 

If anything, Indian design wins and have become critical for us to stay on the right side of the technology curve.