Satya Nadella checks the right boxes talking about G20, Make in India and AI innovation

Satya Nadella at the Microsoft Future Ready Leadership Summit in Bengaluru on January 5.

Looking to help in “amplifying” the India story, Microsoft Executive Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday said the country’s technology story and the policies that helped it reach here is a tale that needs to be told to the world.

Briefing the media after the Future Ready Technology summit in Bengaluru, Nadella said “India is taking the leap to contribute both in the digital technology as well as the soft side of it–the policy side of it, as to how this came about.”

“That story needs to be written about, talked about so that everyone else in the world can also benefit from it. I think India’s leadership of the G20 is obviously a great moment for that. And we at Microsoft want to be as helpful as possible in amplifying what is essentially the output of India,” he said.

Emphasising often on the growth of digital public goods in India, Nadella said India has created a “virtuous cycle of digital public goods that raises the bar on private enterprises, increases competition, reduces transaction costs for the citizens of the country and a set of governance, principles and policies that reinforces all of these.”

“Whether it is about financial inclusion or whether it is about anything else. And so I feel this is India’s moment,” he added.

Talking about Microsoft’s India focus, Nadella said it was the second largest place where the company has its own employees, while there are lots of others who are contributing to the ecosystem in the country.

“More importantly we are investing in the capital in India in building up data centres. We got a fourth one coming up. These are massive investments growing rapidly. We are no longer just a software company, we are a full systems company which is very capital intensive. These data centres are the modern day digital factories and we are making them in India. And we are making them in India so that others can make them in India,” Nadella said.

Indicating Microsoft’s range of collaborative investments in India, Nadella said “whether it is a small business or a public sector project developing state of the art AI, whether it is the largest conglomerates, like the Tatas, Jios or the Adanis using this to scale employment, whether it is SBI or HDFC or any bank using it…not just making in India for India but making in India for the world.”

Stating that technology can play a key role in helping with the global inflationary situation, Nadella said in a world where we have some inflationary forces there was a need for world class technology where we can act as a deflationary force. Everybody wants lower transactional force, everybody wants innovation in every economy, he added.

Indians have taken the first and second space in development and AI space going by usage on the platforms owned by Microsoft.

“When I think about the future of technology, clearly AI is the trend that we are going to be talking about for years to come…the real thing is not the technology breakthrough but it is the technology as applied to real things that have impact.”

“In GitHub (a Microsoft cloud-based software platform) India is already number two in the development community and it is number one in terms of the AI RePose, which means already the Indian developers are reaching out and saying that they want to be part of the AI movement,” Nadella pointed out.