Dt:28/6/21
Satya Nadella (born 19 Aug 1967)
-A Tribute to a Role Model
Dr T H Chowdary*
A Telugu Bharatiya made world news in June 2021. Grandson of a farmer of Bukkapuram village in Anantapur district of AP, son of a Marxist bent of mind IAS officer , N. Ugandhar, Sri Nadella Satyanarayana, famously known as Satya Nadella who passed out form Hyderabad Public School in 1972 and graduated in electrical engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology and acquired M.Tech and MBA degrees in American Universities was elevated as Chairman (the third in succession to the famous brainy Bill Gates and energetic Steve Balmer) of the world famous Microsoft company; the company whose original declared mission was “ A Computer on every desk and in every home” ( unaware of this in the 1980s, I declared my mission to change the telecom regime in India to see, “ Haath haath mein telephone; gaon gaon mein Internet) to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more”.
2. Sri Satya Nadella joined the Microsoft in 1992, in the USA, he worked on several projects of the company; observed that it was being challenged by its rivals; found the reason to be individual brilliance in the associates but no collective co-operative effort to excel the competitors. His meritorious service in the company earned him the Chief Executive Officer’s position in Feb 2014 a distinction for this Indian among over Microsoft’s 100,000 employees drawn from several nationalities.
3. Satya’s Indian upbringing led him to think afresh. He transformed Microsoft from a client services company to one of cloud computing with an infrastructure and services , the largest in the world. His innate Indianness came to work in his relations with and attitude to competitors. When he was a boy , his Marxist father hung a portrait of Karl Marx in the boy’s bed-room. He mother , Prabhavathi was a Sanskrit scholar and lecturer in Padamavati University in Tirupati, AP. To undermine Karl Marx , she defiantly put up a portrait of Goddess, Lakshmi in Satya’s bed room. It worked silently but surely. Satya as CEO of Microsoft changed the mind-set of the company from one of enmity to its rivals to co-operative competition. ( We may recall Sri L.K.Advani’s famous words: Non-BJP parties are not our enemies - they are our competitors as in athletics and games). The inspiring message of Sanatan Dharma , Hindutva:
4. Sahanavavatu…saha veeryam karavavahaih….. Maa vidvishavahaih .. laid behind Satya -infused Microsoft collaboration with its competitors like Apple, IBM and Linux (the free software company). In fact, he led Microsoft into Linus Foundation. Under Nadella , Microsoft revised its mission statement: “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more”. He brought a cultural shift in the company by emphasizing empathy (sahanavavatu), collaboration ( sahaveeryam); and continued learning (tejasvinaavadheetam) and growth.
5. Satya was rewarded for the transformation he brought about in and the growth of the Microsoft by the Board of Directors of the company in June 2021 by elevating him to Chairmanship of Microsoft.
6. Satya wrote a brilliant book, “Hit. Refresh” in 2017 with a foreword by the legendary Bill Gates himself. The book records his “quest to rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone”.
7. Satya went to the USA in 1988 for further studies and thereafter to become its citizen. The Indianness imported in him by his Sanskrit professor mother comes out clearly in the book – every development (like robotics and artificial intelligence and quantum computing) in information technology should be used intelligently and ethically to add to the sum total of happiness , well-being and prosperity of persons, families and nations in the whole world is his and his corporations message conveyed in the book ,” Hit Refresh.” This book ought to be read by every IT professional, businessman and political leader.
* Tailpiece ( Kosaru ) what could be the reasons why Indian scientists working abroad, ( and not in India) get Nobel Prizes; why Indian engineer/ business management persons working in USA (and not in India) rise to be Chairmen of world class Fortune 500 companies like Google (Sundar Pichai) , Microsoft (Satya Nadella), Pepsi (Indra Nooyi) etc.? Was Nehruvian socialism with its permit-licence-quota raj and Sonia regime’s social justice (casteism), “secularism” and regional parties’ welfarism that are the reasons for domestic barrenness and foreign excellence? (686 words)
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