Microsoft will participate in Indian startup growth story: Nadella

Nadella today visited T-Hub, an incubation facility developed by the Telangana government in public-private partnership to support technology-enabled startups

Microsoft Corporation will participate in the development of accelerator programmes dedicated to support the Indian startup ecosystem, the software giant’s chief executive officer Satya Nadella said on Monday. 
 

Nadella, who was on a four-day personal visit to his home town Hyderabad to attend a family function, today visited T-Hub, an incubation facility developed by the Telangana government in public-private partnership to support technology-enabled startups.

“Microsoft is keen to work with T-Hub to develop accelerators and startups,” he told Telangana state IT and panchayat raj minister KT Rama Rao, who took him around the 70,000-sft ‘Catalyst’ incubation facility created on the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT)-Hyderabad campus. 

Sharing the stage with Vishal Sikka, chief executive officer of Infosys, and Keerti Melkote, co-founder and chief technology officer of Hewlett Packard company Aruba Networks, Nadella addressed the budding entrepreneurs at T-Hub, while keeping his sentences crisp and short. 

“I travelled across the globe. But, the thing that has given me the most energy is the time I spent with you entrepreneurs all over here,” he said amid astounding claps and cheers resonating throughout the T-Hub. 

Stating that concept, capability and culture play a crucial role in the development of startup companies, Nadella told the aspiring entrepreneurs that lessons learnt from failure would reap success. “Indians’ IT skill sets are growing phenomenally. Indians will soon dominate the global IT landscape.”

Earlier in the day, Nadella had a breakfast meeting with Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu at the latter's residence in Hyderabad. “A great start to the day with @satyanadella. Discussed on technology initiatives & @Microsoft’s partnership with AP,” Naidu tweeted. 

According to officials, the Andhra Pradesh government entered into an agreement with Microsoft for technology support, including cloud, big data, analytics and business intelligence, for the development of citizen services, education and agriculture sectors in the state.  

“Making Andhra Pradesh an IT hub and establishment of a Microsoft centre in the state were among the issues that came up for discussion during the 80-minute meeting between Nadella and Naidu,” they said.