At Microsoft, six Indians call all the shots

As the world turned its attention on Microsoft's launch of Windows 7, one thing went quietly unnoticed. Indians now don’t just have a foot in the door of technology, they have prised open the Gates. And literally has 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 the world’s largest software company 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, with some among them being Technical Fellows (the highest technical rank).

These ‘Made in India’ 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 great Indian takeover. 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. Says Ravi Ventakesan, chairman, Microsoft India, “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 & managing partner of CareerNet, a technology-focussed head-hunting firm reckons 20% 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.”

The bright kid from Hyderabad Public School, Satya Nadella, is Binging Google head on, being the senior VP, R&D, online services division, while Amitabh Srivastava, senior VP, Windows Azure, leads the development for Microsoft’s cloud computing business.

Srivastava reports to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect. Somasegar, senior vice-president, developer division (reports to Bob Muglia, president, server & tools), has over 4,000 people under him worldwide as he heads the developer division.

This is the division responsible for all new products including the recently-launched Windows 7. Somasegar started the India Development Center in Hyderabad and the Microsoft Canada Development Center in Vancouver. He holds four patents and has worked on eight different operating system releases before heading the developer division.

On the other hand, both Gupta and Nadella were also technical assistants to Bill Gates, advising the company founder on future technology trends. That was before they moved to their current roles with Anoop Gupta being the corporate VP, Microsoft Unlimited Potential Group, Education Product Group, Technology Policy & Strategy. He advises Craig Mundie (chief research & strategy officer) on technology, policy and strategy and also reports to him.

Says Amit Mittal, corporate VP, unlimited potential group, Microsoft (he reports to Mundie). “I worked on both the technology and business side in my 16 years at Microsoft. My group founded the BizTalk server, LiveMesh platform, Windows starter edition and netbook support.”

“My group is involved in development of new products that will create solutions for the next one billion people (those untouched by tech) and create value for Microsoft,” he explained.

Mittal has 20 patents to his credit for work done in mobile technologies, e-commerce and software services areas.
Just to give a feel of how well Indians are doing at Microsoft it’s important to understand the top management structure of the Redmond giant. Apart from the CEO, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft has seven presidents, 15 senior vice-presidents and about 100 corporate vice presidents.

Among the 15 VPs, there are four Indians and another 8-10 corporate VPs of Indian origin. Both India chairman of Microsoft and managing director Ravi Venkatesan and Rajan Anandan (Indian father and Sri Lankan mother) respectively are among the global corporate VPs. While Indian tech prowess is well acknowledged worldwide, it’s only in recent years (last 18-24 months) that the likes of the above have begun holding the reins. The Windows, as they say, have opened to the skies.