Gates to visit India in November
Monday, 07 October 2002, 19:30 IST
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BANGALORE: Bill Gates, chairman of software giant Microsoft Corp, will visit India in November, signifying the country's growing importance for his business, his company said. The company in a statement said Gates, who will be in India between November 11 and 14, will spend a day each in New Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore and Hyderabad. "India is a big bet for Microsoft," said Rajiv Kaul, managing director of Microsoft's Indian subsidiary. "We are growing rapidly and we are undoubtedly one of the fastest growing subsidiaries for Microsoft in Asia," he said. Microsoft, the world's biggest software company famous for its brand name products like Windows and Office, opened its first full-fledged software development centre outside the United States in Hyderabad. The visit by Gates, one of the world's wealthiest man, will be his third sojourn to India, which has emerged as a leading global software centre on the strength of hundreds of thousands of cost-efficient programmers. Kaul said India's "unbeatable developer strength" had helped the company's local unit of Microsoft. Gates is visiting India in the backdrop of Microsoft's global efforts to boost its .NET strategy that involves promotion of software to help companies talk to customers, partners and suppliers and do business seamlessly over the Internet. Analysts say persuading programmers who write code and developers who design software to back one standard is a key battle in the efforts to dominate the industry. Winning the minds of Indian developers could be key, they say.
Source: IANS
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