Nadella visits India development centre in Hyderabad

This was the Microsoft CEO's first trip to his hometown after assuming the top position

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Microsoft chief executive officer, Satya Nandella, on Monday visited the Microsoft India Development Centre (MSIDC) in Hyderabad, the IT giant's largest research and development centre outside its headquarters at Redmond in the US.

Nadella's maiden visit to his home town, Hyderabad, after assuming the top position at Microsoft in February 2014, was kept highly secretive by the company officials as well as the state government authorities.

A Microsoft official told Business Standard that Nadella visited MSIDC, located at Gachibowli, today morning, addressed its employees and shared with them his vision for the future. The official, however, declined to share further information stating that 'it was completely an internal affair'.

Microsoft India (R&D) Private Limited, a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation, set up MSIDC in Hyderabad in 1998. MSIDC, which employs over 3,500 professional, is a part of Microsoft's strategy of global shared development where teams across geographies collaborate to build software and services.

An alumni of the almost nine-decade-old Hyderabad Public School (HPS), Nadella is the son of former Indian Administrative Service officer B N Yugandhar. Though visiting HPS and meeting his classmates today was initially on Nadella's agenda, HPS sources informed that he made up his mind in the last moment. "Nadella said that he will visit the school sometime during this December," the sources said, quoting Phani Kondepudi, Nadella's batchmate and also his colleague in the US.

The Microsoft CEO, after landing at the Begumpet Airport on Sunday, paid a half-an-hour courtesy visit to Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao. He, however, couldn't meet Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, as the latter was in Visakhapatnam to inaugurate a 20,000-sft incubation centre there.

According to Nadella's India itinerary, he will fly to Mumbai today to chair a jury and select the winners of ET Awards for Corporate Excellence 2014, before visiting New Delhi on September 30 to participate in Nasscom's 10,000 Startups, and another programme focused on digital technologies.