Microsoft Corporation CEO Satya Nadella met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday in New Delhi.
Nadella stands third in the list of major tech executives to meet Mr. Modi, after Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Nadella is in India on a vacation with family.
The Redmond CEO said his company is looking forward to partner with the ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’ programmes of the Modi government.
“I have an aspiration that in this mobile and cloud world we can empower every Indian individual, citizen of India, every business organisation and institution in India, to be able to thrive with new technology, so I am looking forward to being part of both your ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’,” Nadella said after meeting Ravi Shankar Prasad, the union minister for communications and IT.
“We are making huge investments with our data center in particular which we think can empower organisations in this country to be world class with the access to technology which is all going to be available locally. We are looking forward to partnering closely, seeing all of this come true to help every Indian business and every Indian citizen,” he added.
The Digital India programme, which aims at getting the whole of India connected, is estimated to cost Rs 1 lakh crore. It envisages all government services to be delivered electronically by 2018.
The Hyderabad-born CEO also highlighted that Microsoft is planning to make huge investments in its data centres, the capacity of which could be expanded, depending on the requirement.
“I have requested him to 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,” Mr Prasad told reporters after the meeting.
Nadella also met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and expressed his company’s intent to invest more in India.
