New Delhi: Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, has landed in India and is addressing students, young achievers, developers and entrepreneurs in New Delhi today.
Earlier in the day, Nadella met telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and discussed about enhancing Microsoft's contribution to the Centre's Digital India initiative.
At the company's 'Tech For Good, Ideas for India' event, he said, "We are creating a canvas for future apps and it will be a game changer."
Later in the day, Hyderabad-born Nadella is expected to attend a session with some 100-150 top executives of corporate India.
Expressing his desire to help empower India, Nadella quoted poet Mirza Ghalib's famous lines, "Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ke har khwahish par dam nikle, bahut nikle mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle."
Also read: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s third visit to India begins today
Yes, he loves poetry and here are 10 more interesting facts about him:
- He’s been with Microsoft for a long time: Before becoming the CEO, Nadella had played many other roles at Microsoft. He joined the company all the way back in 1992 and since then, he has been held several executive-level roles including management of Microsoft’s Server and Tools division, which generated double-digit billions in revenue. Nadella is also credited with transformation of Windows Live Search into Bing, which now provides a informational backbone to a wide range of Microsoft services.
- He was born in India: Nadella was born in 1967 to a Telugu-speaking family in Hyderabad and attended the Hyderabad Public School of Begumpet.
- He’s an engineer: Nadella did his bachelor of electrical engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology in India. Even though his primary interest was computer science, the course was not offered to him at the school. He then moved to the United States where he went on for MS in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and then pursued MBA from the University of Chicago.
- He loves poetry: Nadella enjoys both American and Indian poetry. “It’s like code,” he said, according to the Microsoft’s website. “You’re trying to take something that can be described in many, many sentences and pages of prose, but you can convert it into a couple lines of poetry and you still get the essence, so it’s that compression.”
- He's a huge fan of Cricket: Nadella is a huge Cricket fan and played the sport while he was in school. Nadella once said, “I think playing Cricket taught me more about working in teams and leadership that has stayed with me throughout my career.”
- He also takes online classes: In his first email to Microsoft employees as CEO, Nadella described himself as a lifelong learner who buys more books and signs up for more online courses than he could ever complete.
- He is very private: Nadella has been quiet on the microblogging website Twitter - despite having more than 584k followers. Before becoming the CEO, he only tweeted 27 times since he created his account in February 2009. But, he has recently started to post on twitter.
- He married his high school love: Nadella met his wife Anupuma when they were both students at Hyderabad Public School in the early '80s. They are now married for 22 years and have three kids together.
- Nadella doesn’t have former CEO experience: Unlike Stephen Elop, Alan Mullally, Tony Bates etc, Satya Nadella has never been in control of an entire company, although the divisions he oversaw at Microsoft generated far more revenue than most companies could ever dream of.
- He's now one of the most powerful Indian businessmen: Nadella's appointment as CEO has made him the most powerful Indian-born tech executive in the world, according to Reuters. He had joined PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi among other Indians reaching the very top of well-known American corporations, Recently, Sundar Pichai also joined the league as he took over as the CEO of Google Inc.
