Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, never dreamed of being the CEO of the company. In his first ever address at a public event in India, Nadella took some time to talk about his life, the roadway to the CEO position, and Microsoft’s future plans.
“Having grown up in India, the idea that I would have the opportunity to talk to all of you as CEO of Microsoft was beyond my wildest dreams. Admittedly, my interests at that time were a bit more focused on cricket than on technology,” said Nadella to an audience of over 1500 participants via video chat.
On February 4th, Microsoft announced Satya Nadella to be its new CEO. Nadella became the third CEO of the company, replacing Steve Ballmer.
Addressing India, Satya Nadella says the country has tremendous opportunities to improve its existing Cloud infrastructure. He cites the overwhelming success with cloud platform, Windows Azure. “I believe the opportunities ahead for India with the Azure cloud platform are tremendous and I encourage you to seize all of them,” said Nadella at the Windows Azure Cloud Conference event.
The Indian born Nadella had studied Electrical Engineering from Mangalore University. “We are at a pivotal time in our industry- living in and developing for a mobile first, cloud first world,” he said.
Nadella started working at Microsoft in 1992, and had previously spearheaded the cloud and enterprise divisions. The cloud division has been Microsoft’s biggest source of growth in India. “It helps Indian customers leapfrog to the cloud, and accrue significant cost savings.”
“It provides a unique opportunity for our partners to scale their business,” he added.
