Hailing the new chief
Since it became apparent last week that Satya Nadella was in line to become only the third chief executive of Microsoft, the Indian community in Silicon Valley has been bubbling over with pride.
That his ascension would generate such excitement might seem surprising at first. Indians have become a force in Silicon Valley, where about 15% of tech start-ups have Indian founders and a handful of notable companies, such has Adobe Systems, have Indian chief executives.
Yet Nadella’s appointment is being hailed by Indians as something more. It’s another giant leap forward to have their own running one of the world’s most important companies. And he’ll be stepping into the shoes of Bill Gates, one of the world’s most famous names, to run a company for which Indians have a special affection.
“This is why this is making front page news in India,” said Vivek Wadhwa, a former entrepreneur and Stanford researcher who has studied the Indian technology community. “It shows how they’ve crossed the barriers. They’ve made it to the mainstream in a big way.”
On Tuesday, Microsoft confirmed that Nadella, 46, would become chief executive, replacing Steve Ballmer, who had succeeded Gates. In addition, Gates is becoming a product advisor to Nadella and stepping down as chairman, replaced by John Thompson.
“Satya Nadella is Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates his wingman,” read the headline across the top of the Times of India website.
Upon taking the helm at Microsoft, Nadella instantly becomes one of the most influential Indian business leaders in the word. He joins the ranks of such other notable names as Indra Nooyi, who is chair and chief executive of PepsiCo, and Ajaypal Singh Banga, chief executive of MasterCard. But with $78 billion in revenue last year, Microsoft had more sales than both of those companies combined.
Across the U.S., Indian Americans have taken leadership roles in politics, finance and government. In Silicon Valley, Ro Khanna, former deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Commerce, is running for the U.S. House of Representatives and has drawn strong support from local tech leaders.
“I congratulate Satya on this exciting news,” Khanna said in an email. “His position exemplifies the incredible contributions that Indian Americans have made toward growing the economy, furthering innovation and creating good paying jobs.”
Nowhere in the U.S., though, have Indians made a bigger impact than in Silicon Valley. Although Microsoft is based in Redmond, Wash., Nadella’s appointment is still seen as a kind of capstone to the remarkable rise of this community.
“It’s just one more symbolic thing that validates that our world is becoming much more global and is crossing boundaries,” said Padmasree Warrior, chief technology officer of Cisco Systems. “It suggests that it’s execution and results that matter in the end, regardless of where you come from.”
Nadella was born in Hyderabad, whose nickname is the “City of Pearls,” in southeastern India. In a biography on the Microsoft website, Nadella says playing cricket was a “passion.”
“I think playing cricket taught me more about working in teams and leadership that has stayed with me throughout my career,” he says.
India has famously invested in technology education for decades. But Nadella attended what was then Mangalore University, a strong school, but not considered on par with the nation’s elite Indian Institutes of Technology.
He moved to the U.S. to take a job at Sun Microsystems before taking a sales job at Microsoft in 1992.
Sanjay Parthasarathy, another Microsoft executive, met Nadella and persuaded him to join a product team, where he would be making things instead of selling them, a move that probably set him on the course that would lead to the corporate boardroom.
Parthasarathy, who retired from Microsoft several years ago and now runs a start-up called Indix, recalls that in the early 1990s the two friends were among just a handful of Indians at the company. Although they all had tremendous ambition and confidence, Nadella seemed to go a step beyond.
“We were both pretty hard-driving,” he said. “But Nadella, he would get on a plane to Chicago every Friday for two or three years to get his MBA. I’m a pretty demanding manager. But he was putting himself through so much more.”
But that kind of will, many Indians say, was necessary to prove themselves in an era in which they were initially stereotyped as good engineers but not good executives. Wadhwa recalls being told by venture capitalists in the early 1990s they would invest in his company if he found someone else to be the chief executive.
Over the years, though, Indians helped one another scale those walls. They built extensive immigrant networks, particularly in Silicon Valley, where they invested in one another’s companies, hired friends and provided support and mentorship, Wadhwa said.
The excitement over Nadella’s new role isn’t just about the title and that he has climbed another notch higher, industry observers say. It also has a lot to do with the company he will represent.
Although Microsoft’s reputation has taken a hit in the U.S. in recent years as it has struggled to adapt to new technology trends, the company remains much more respected around the world. That’s especially true in India, where in the early 1990s Microsoft became one of the first major technology companies to make significant investments in the country in terms of products and hiring.
In March 1997, Gates made his first visit to the country, and the four-day tour drew headlines across the nation. And his foundation has made India a focus of its philanthropic work.
“It’s a big deal for the community to have one of our own become the CEO of such an iconic company,” said Kamla Bhatt, an Indian blogger and podcaster in Silicon Valley.
Mrinal Desai said he’s found fresh inspiration from Nadella’s appointment.
Desai grew up in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, and moved to the Silicon Valley in 1999 after several years of struggling to get a visa. He eventually got a job at LinkedIn, and now is chief executive and co-founder of a start-up called Addappt.
Last week, as rumors swirled that Nadella was going to get the job, Desai tweeted about how “patriotic” he was feeling.
“For most of us who are immigrants, America is always the promised land where there are no limits but yourself,” Desai said. “These are the kind of symbols that just remind us of that over and over again. When you see such big corporations being led by Indians, it’s just incredible.”
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Twitter: @obrien
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BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX
A computing giant’s evolution
Here’s a look at key moments in Microsoft’s history:
1975: Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
1980: Steve Ballmer joins the company, runs marketing and sales.
1981: IBM ships first personal computers running MS-DOS operating system.
Nov. 20, 1985: Microsoft ships first version of Windows.
1992: Satya Nadella joins the company.
Aug. 24, 1995: Windows 95 is released in one of Microsoft’s biggest product launches.
May 18, 1998: Justice Department and 20 states sue Microsoft, accusing the Windows maker of abusing its market power to thwart competition.
July 21, 1998: Widely seen as the successor to chairman and longtime friend Gates, Ballmer is named president of the software company.
Jan. 13, 2000: Gates promotes Ballmer to CEO of Microsoft while staying on as chairman and chief software architect.
Nov. 2, 2001: Justice Department announces settlement of Microsoft antitrust case.
Nov. 15, 2001: Microsoft releases its Xbox video game system, one of the company’s most successful products.
Nov. 13, 2006: Microsoft launches the Zune music player, its answer to Apple’s iPod. The company discontinues the Zune five years later, in 2011.
Feb. 1, 2008: Microsoft makes unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Microsoft withdraws its offer months later because of resistance from Yahoo.
April 12, 2010: Microsoft unveils the Kin phone, an attempt to compete with Apple’s iPhone. The phone was discontinued two months later.
May 10, 2011: Microsoft announces it will buy Internet phone service Skype for $8.5 billion.
Oct. 25, 2012: Microsoft holds a launch event in New York for Windows 8, a major overhaul of its ubiquitous computer operating system.
May 7, 2013: Microsoft says it will retool Windows 8 to address complaints and confusion.
July 11, 2013: Ballmer announces a sweeping restructuring to cope with competitive challenges from Apple and Google.
July 18, 2013: Microsoft books a $900-million write-down for slashing the price of its Surface RT tablet.
Aug. 23, 2013: Microsoft says Ballmer will retire in the next 12 months after 33 years with the company.
Nov. 22, 2013: Launch of latest video game console, Xbox One.
Tuesday: Microsoft confirms Nadella as CEO. Gates steps down as chairman and is replaced by John Thompson.
Source: Associated Press
