Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says keen to partner in Make in India programme

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Friday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in the national capital and said the global technology giant is looking forward to partner with the 'Digital India' and 'Make in India' programmes of the Modi government.

Nadella is the third tech giant executive to meet Modi, after Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year.

"I have an aspiration that in this mobile and cloud world, we can empower every individual citizen of India and every business organisation and institution in India to be able to try with new technology. So, I am looking forward to be a part of both the Digital India and Make in India," he said after meeting Prasad.

"It's always fantastic for me personally to be in India and the conversation I had with the minister was wide ranging," Hyderabad-born Nadella said. "We are making huge investments in our data centres in particular, which we think can empower organisations in this country to be world class with the access to great technology."

'Make in India' is a national programme to transform the country into a global manufacturing hub.

Prasad said he has requested Microsoft to set consider electronic manufacturing in India.

"I have also requested that Microsoft has a great profile in the field of social services, (and) digital literacy can be promoted. We had a very purposeful exchange. I am very happy and I warmly welcome him," the minister said after the meeting.

"I have suggested to him that we are keen if there are certain suggestions to give to further improve the Digital India concept. We are quite willing to accept. We are talking about the concept of other products that they are going to launch in India, including from digital locker to cloud to data centres. I have requested him to consider electronic manufacturing," Prasad said.

With the aim to turn the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy, the Modi government has envisaged Rs 1 lakh crore Digital India project.

 

Nadella was in India in September when he said the tech giant will offer its commercial cloud services - Azure and Office 365 - by the end of 2015 from local data centres in India where the company sees a $2 trillion business opportunity.

The Microsoft CEO said on Friday that the world is moving more towards "cloud and mobile".

"Our engagement on both these fronts is what you will see if you look at what we are trying to do with the cloud. One of the unique capabilities that we have is to help build data centers that are locally available in India but yet are world class infrastructure. But on top of that, we also have our server infrastructure which enables every business to have their own flexibility in standing up its data centre," he added.