Satya Nadella In India: Digitising Businesses; Reliance & SBI Partnerships And SaaS Accelerator

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella flagged off his three day India visit by delivering a keynote speech at the Microsoft’s Future Decoded CEO Summit in Mumbai. Addressing the audience, which included officials from various tech companies, Nadella urged them to develop more inclusive solutions by leveraging their own tech capabilities.

Nadella added that Microsoft’s mission is to help businesses work independently through the intervention of technology. Microsoft is helping organisations to build their own set of tools by leveraging new-age technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, machine learning and more.

He also highlighted the lack of opportunities for tech professionals in India.

“72% of jobs for software engineers in India will be outside of the technology industry.” – Satya Nadella

Digitising Businesses

In the last decade, consumer service aggregating companies such as Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, among improved the productivity of various segments in India. However, Nadella believes that these aggregators are not enough alone and digital interventions are required for the further broadening of productivity.

Speaking about Microsoft’s future bet, Nadella said that the company will be investing in improving the skills of software engineers and making them more employable. The company will build complete toolchain for developers, he added. Nadella further said that the increasing pace of digitisation across segments is going to be the defining trend over the next 10 years.

Reliance Partners With Mircosoft

During the event, Microsft also announced a partnership with Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) to promote the digital infrastructure in India. In conversation with Nadella, Ambani said that the tie-up with Microsoft is going to be the defining partnership of the decade.

Ambani added that Indians already has the mindset to leverage technologies. “The partnership will help organisations to get the digital toolset to scale their businesses,” he added.

Microsoft had earlier partnered with Reliance Jio in August last year to work together to boost Microsoft’s cloud service Azure adoption among small and medium businesses as well as MSMEs in India.

Microsoft’s 100X100X100 SaaS Accelerator

Earlier in the day, Microsoft launched 100X100X100 accelerator programme for software-as-a-service (SaaS) startups in India in a bid to promote the startup ecosystem of the country.

Under this initiative, Microsoft will shortlist 100 startups offering enterprise tech solutions which are in their Series A to C funding rounds. As part of this programme, Microsoft has invited 100 SaaS companies which will help these startups to scale their operations and offerings. So far, 50 startups have already been shortlisted for the programme.

The 100X100X100 programme will provide market opportunities to startups and will also work to turn these startups profitable in India by helping them to increase their revenue and client base.

Microsoft Partners With SBI Foundation

Microsoft India also announced a collaboration with SBI Foundation to create opportunities for persons with disabilities working in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector.

With this collaboration, both the organisations will provide technology training to such individuals which will help them to get better opportunities in the BFSI segment. The three-year programme will start with the upskilling of 500 individuals working in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and NCR in the first year.

As part of this joint effort, Microsoft and SBI Foundation will also develop an AI-powered recruitment platform which will help companies in the BFSI segment to easily connect with persons with disabilities.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.