At Microsoft, six Indians take major decisions
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 29 October 2009, 14:58 IST   |    12 Comments
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At Microsoft, six Indians take major decisions
New Delhi: As the launch of Windows 7 drew the whole world's attention, one thing went unnoticed. The emergence of Indian executives in Microsoft, who now don't just have a foot in the door of technology, they have prised open the Gates, and literally have the keys to most of the doors at MS office. Indeed, a quick roll call of the Microsoft global management team will reveal a distinct Indian trail. Indians run some of the key businesses within Microsoft, with at least half-a-dozen of them among the top 25 out of the company's 95,000-strong workforce. The tenets of Microsoft are being defined by the likes of S Somasegar of Chennai, Amit Mittal of Mumbai, Amitabh Srivastava from Kanpur, Gurdeep Singh Pall from Chandigarh, Satya Nadella of Hyderabad and Anoop Gupta of Delhi. Along with a few others, they run everything from cloud computing, unified communications to new software development initiatives at the software behemoth. As part of the crack team, they report directly to the top four in the Microsoft management hierarchy. These Indian techies hold over 100 patents, have written key research papers in technical journals and are now driving the company to its next growth path. Microsoft is not the only one witnessing a large number of Indian executives in the organization. Several global technology companies have at least one or two Indians in the top management. Quite a shift, considering that not too far back Indian code writers were dismissed merely as 'tech coolies' doing the low-end tech jobs. Ravi Ventakesan, Chairman, Microsoft India said, "There's a sea change on how Indians are seen. They are moving up in sync with contributions they have made to technology and business." In Bangalore, Anshuman Das, Co-founder and Managing Partner of CareerNet, a technology-focussed head-hunting firm reckons that 20 percent of senior vice-presidents and above in several multinational technology companies could be Indians, up from almost zilch a few years back. "This will pick up as Indians have now proven themselves. Many Indians from the 1988-1994 batch of IITs and other engineering institutes are in senior positions now," added Das.

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