‘Technologies will keep coming and going’

NEW DELHI: Microsoft Corp CEO Satya Nadella is a man on the move. Traversing three Indian cities in three days, meeting a gamut of people from ministers to CEOs to journalists, Nadella is gung-ho about India. Edited excerpts from an interview.

Is there is a specific purpose for this visit?

For me this trip is all about the cloud work that we are doing in India and the impact it is having. When I think about our cloud itself, we have made significant investments in building out three state-of-the-art data centres, in fact putting a lot of capital to work. But what is gratifying to see is the momentum of what people are doing on top of it. Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person on this planet, but in the context of India we want to make sure it’s not just about technology, but it is the technology that Indian organisations create on top of what we bring.

Where do you see Microsoft in India over next 10 20 years?

Our fundamental identity has been as a provider of tools and technology — whether it’s students writing term papers, small businesses trying to improve productivity, large businesses trying to become more competitive, or public sector trying to become more efficient... Our goal is to provide them that technology. Today it is cloud, tomorrow it is AI (artificial intelligence), the day after it will be AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality)...technologies will keep coming and going but our identity of empowering individuals and organisations is what will remain. So 10 years from now, we will be talking about some very brand new technology, but what will not be different will be the examples I will be telling you, which will be about what are the Indian institutions and individuals doing with that.