Technology should drive more inclusive economic growth: Satya Nadella

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella kicked off his visit to India by addressing a gathering of over 150 of the country’s eminent industry leaders at Microsoft Future Decoded: CEO Summit in Mumbai.

“When you look out to the next ten years, we need broader productivity and broader cross-sectoral impact of digital technology. In other words, the next ten years are going to be defined by digital technology,” Nadella said.

He added that Microsoft is committed not only to expand access to technology but also to help organizations of all sizes build their own digital capability.

“Going ahead, in the era of intelligent cloud and intelligent edge, you are going to see a ubiquitous computing fabric that is distributed. You are going to have intelligence that is ambient, experiences that span devices and senses. To me, it comes down to how every organization here in India can ride this wave and build their own tech intensity,” Nadella said.

“How can we help you create more independence, not dependence on us, but more independence as your own tech company and with your own tech capability. That’s the fundamental, primary mission for us as a company,” he added.

Laying out his vision for tech intensity as a driver for economic growth, he urged leaders to ensure everyone benefits from this growth.

“When you build tech intensity, you also need to consider, especially in a country like India, how is what you are doing with digital technology driving more inclusive economic growth,” Nadella said.

To make progress, he said that every domain expert out there will need to be empowered to make them productive developers and that the next era will be defined by citizen developers.

Empowering Indian organizations to achieve more

He gave examples of how Indian enterprises and unicorns are utilizing Microsoft’s intelligent cloud and intelligent edge offerings to do incredible things.

• Piramal Glass is using Azure IoT to optimize its manufacturing operations and create a feedback loop between its quality control and production teams.
• Myntra is using Azure to handle tens of thousands of online orders every minute.
• InMobi is transforming mobile advertising with Azure and Cosmos DB.
• Udaan is relying on Azure to power its fast-growing B2B marketplace.
• HAMS is deploying AI to automate driver’s license tests in India.
• Eros Now is building a next-gen recommendation engine with Azure AI to meet the changing expectations of its 18 million-plus subscribers
• Apollo Hospitals is using Azure AI to predict a patient’s risk for cardiovascular diseases.
• Narayana Health is using Power BI to make healthcare accessible and more affordable
• SBI is rolling out Power Apps across 200 branches, in what started with its employees in Trivandrum leveraging the platform to helping their frontline sales teams manage customer relationships.
• Royal Enfield is deploying Dynamics 365 across the customer journey – from sales to service.
• Eureka Forbes is using Dynamics 365 to put insights into the hands of its door-to-door salespeople.
• MindTree is using Teams to collaborate internally and externally for its campus hiring.
• Mahindra Group is rolling out Teams across its companies for all of their collaboration and communication needs.
• Reliance Industries is taking a platform approach to use technology to create more technology.

Satya Nadella in conversation with Mukesh Ambani

Nadella invited Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries, for a fireside chat where they talked about the role technology can play in India’s digital transformation and how innovations in India can help in finding solutions to global problems.

“The opportunity that we have for India is to become the premier digital society in the world. All the components are coming in place. As we grow and march forward, I have no doubt that we will become among the top three economies in the world,” Ambani said.

He touched upon the progress Jio and Microsoft have made on the alliance announced in August, 2019.

“Personally, I am very committed and privileged that Satya has committed to India, on a scale that I never anticipated that a multinational will, and we’re very excited about the partnership that Jio and Microsoft will have. As we look at this decade, it will be a defining partnership,” he said.

Nadella also met with leaders from Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI), and manufacturing industries on the side lines of the summit.

Jean-Philippe Courtois in conversation with Rajesh Gopinathan

Earlier in the day, Jean-Philippe Courtois, Executive Vice President and President, Microsoft Global Sales, Marketing and Operations, engaged in a fireside chat with Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO and Managing Director, Tata Consulting Services (TCS). The two leaders discussed the digital transformation underway at TCS and the emergence of modern workplaces with the rise of millennial employees.

“A few years back, we took a big bet – we committed that TCS will attempt to be 100% agile by 2020. We are about two‑thirds of the way there. But it wouldn’t have come together, it wouldn’t have been possible, if we couldn’t do what we call location-independent agile. It leverages a lot of collaboration technologies that have been brought to bear,” Gopinathan said.

Talking about millennials and winning the talent war with technology, he said, “Millennials are a phenomenal knowledge pool. This cohort in many ways is able to adapt and therefore they’re very fast learners, if you make the knowledge available to them in a manner in which they can consume. We massively leveraged cloud internally to make learning available to them on an always-on any device kind of a platform.”

Commenting on the partnership with TCS, Courtois said, “We decided more than a year ago to go after a big, bolder vision together and as a result we’ve been keen on investing with TCS to build a Microsoft Business Unit which spans across all our cloud capabilities and the modern workplace. I’m very excited to see the way it’s growing globally and for sure the recent joint success we are shipping together with Walgreens is a fantastic example of that massive transformation we have established, pivoting on a digital player having a customer-centric approach.”

“We engage on AI everywhere in the world,” Courtois added, elaborating on Microsoft’s role as a tech company. “To us, AI is an opportunity to empower developers on one hand and of course the ability to enable and empower organizations. And the last one is even more important, the ability to enable people, to empower citizens.”

Accelerating India’s B2B SaaS startups

Microsoft announced the launch of the 100x100x100 program to accelerate the B2B SaaS startup ecosystem in India. A first of its kind program in India, this initiative will bring together 100 committed companies and 100 early-stage startups that have enterprise-ready solutions to offer. Each participating company will commit to spending $100K over a course of 18 months on enterprise-ready solutions provided by SaaS startups. More than 50 startups are part of the program at launch.

You can read more about the program here.

Creating opportunities for underserved youth in the BFSI industry

Microsoft India announced a collaboration with SBI Foundation to create opportunities for youth living with disabilities in the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector.

The three-year program was launched by Jean-Philippe Courtois, EVP and President, Global Sales, Marketing and Operations, Microsoft, and Rajnish Kumar, Chairman, SBI. Through this collaboration, Microsoft and the SBI Foundation will equip youth living with disabilities with the technology and training needed to better prepare them for integration into the BFSI workforce. You can read more about the program here.

Tomorrow, Nadella is scheduled to deliver a keynote at Future Decoded Bengaluru Tech Summit, where he will address developers, technologists, and industry leaders.

Get live updates, latest announcements, and media assets during Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s visit to India from February 24-26, 2020 here.