Driving India’s Techade

At the core, I think we are a company that gets up every morning to build better tools for developers, so that they can build more technology. That’s who we are, and that’s how we will continue to be.” – Satya Nadella?

Having Satya Nadella with us in India last week truly brought alive our mission of empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Technology is changing lives. It is skilling and empowering people. It is creating job opportunities in an optimistic India that’s moving towards the aspiration of being the data capital of the planet. To see the magic of it all coming together, packed in an intense week of immersive and experiential learning, sharing, exchanging, and building ideas, has been incredibly inspiring.???

Reflecting on last week:??

India leads Tech??

India is one of the largest data generators in the world, with a young, tech-savvy population. It is anticipated that the share of IT in India's GDP will get to 10% by fiscal 2025. India is the innovation and talent hub for the digital change that is happening globally. Our IT industry is clocking revenue upwards of $220bn. developing capabilities at scale to contribute to the data economy.???

In the last few years, India has taken center stage in the world, empowering every citizen with technology. Unlike other nations, where private networks are ubiquitous, India has been building robust public digital infrastructure. India is achieving more with the design and a global benchmark of execution on the Digital Public Goods (DPGs) for identity, payments, transactions, data consent and choice, and many others. India has demonstrated incredible speed, scale and depth in DPGs and our growth will be driven on our tech intensity, which must go beyond just building technology, to permeating people’s lives, cultures, and mindsets.???

Tech Leads India???

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is now among the top 5 payment networks globally, within a very short time period. It has enabled inter-bank peer-to-peer and person-to-merchant transactions, at among the lowest cost of transactions globally.?This digital infrastructure is helping better match consumers and businesses, facilitate transactions, and ease the cost of doing business. UPI is now likely to be a significant enabler for accelerating India's growth and also provide a strong self-sufficient ecosystem for a longer-term strategic advantage.?

Today, India is home to the world’s third largest startup ecosystem. While the headline news captures the strong unicorn momentum, it is important to note that startups and SMBs are helping India address many of its social, economic, and developmental challenges. They are building solutions not only for India but for the world, and we are proud to be able to support them in their journey. India’s emergence and growth as a global technology powerhouse will be driven by its indigenously developed tech solutions. We recently launched the ‘2022 India Impact Summary’?which gives a snapshot of the progress we’re making in this direction. Microsoft India continues to invest in future-ready skilling, agile infrastructure, meaningful innovation, and robust ecosystems for a connected, empowered, digital India.???

Lead India's Techade??

To remain competitive and relevant in a new world, companies will have to actively and continuously build differentiated digital capabilities and be future ready on the foundation of our key digital imperatives of inclusive economic growth, advancing fundamental rights, sustainability and trust. These are critical to not just companies using technology but also those building technology to achieve more with less – to be able to drive business outcomes amid today’s constraints, and improving their time-to-value, increase agility, and reduce costs.?To lead India's?techade?three key elements are critical for every organization: Data, Trust and People?

• Data & AI:?Every organization is working to set up a full data loop across the ecosystem, leveraging data as an asset class and then future charging the business with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Cloud is critical to enable all of this. The discussions over the last week, have reiterated the importance of cloud to India’s unfolding growth story. It is estimated that 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms by 2025. As Satya shared in his keynote address, we are now committed to making cloud infrastructure available everywhere to enable all computing for data and AI.???
• Trusted Tech:?India’s growth will be built on trusted, ethical and secure technology. People will only use tech that they trust. This is exactly why security is built in by design into all Microsoft products and services. At Microsoft, we believe that trust comprises of six elements: Fairness, Inclusion, Security & Privacy, Reliability & Safety, Compliance, and Transparency. Our focus continues to be on ‘not just what tech can do, but what it should do.’?
• People & Future of Work:?Today, India has the 3rd largest AI talent pool in the world with 9.75M?devs?in India, 2nd biggest developer community on?Github?globally after the US and 3rd highest scientific scholarly output globally. Most importantly, India has now the highest contributions globally in?Github?for the new submissions for AI. Over the past week, we launched several new initiatives to support India’s tech talent. Our collaboration with the?NIELET?will skill underserved students in cybersecurity and prepare them for jobs. Our work with the?Indian Space Research Organization?will help mentor and support startups. The?Microsoft Power Apps platform?continues to enable people with little or no coding experience to build apps for improving business processes. The citizen development through Power Apps is an important element of our efforts to nurture innovation in India. The Microsoft ‘Future Ready Champions of Code’, is empowering developers innovate on Microsoft platforms to build promising technologies for the future. All of this is also enabling very strong diverse and inclusive capabilities to reimagine the future of work.?

Satya and I had the honor to meet Hon’ble Prime Minister, Narendra Modi ji and many other leaders from Govt of India for a discussion on how India can make rapid progress towards its goals of sustainable, inclusive socioeconomic development. Microsoft shares the Prime Minister’s vision of a Digital India and will continue to develop tech-based solutions and programs that accelerate the ongoing digital transformation for India’s?Techade.?For Microsoft, Satya called it?"Make-Make-Make" aligned to India's aspirations…?Microsoft makes in India?with our?DataCenter?and people investments, enabling every person and every organization in India to first?make new technology and IP in India, and then?make from India for the world.??

?I am grateful to the industry leaders, developers, entrepreneurs who joined Satya, the Microsoft team and me over the last few days to drive concerted efforts to chart India’s digital transformation. One of Microsoft’s greatest strengths is our people who bring their collective power together to move the world forward. The magic of this came together at the One Microsoft India townhall at Hyderabad. What a homecoming for Satya! His unique leadership insights, people-first mindset, and clarity of purpose inspires us as we continue to build a north-star lived culture for our employees and power growth, accessibility, inclusion, and innovation for the world.??

What a week to start 2023… As we now get on with the year, our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more is strengthened than ever before!?