He’s tall, thin and wiry and knows how to captivate an audience packed with the young and restless—students, entrepreneurs, developers and achievers who had assembled to listen to Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft Corp., at an event in New Delhi on 30 May, called Tech for Good, Ideas for India.

Nadella began his keynote address in a rather unconventional manner by saying that poetry and computer science were his two passions that have inspired him, and then quoted classical Urdu poet Ghalib with a flourish that left the geeky crowd spellbound. The couplet none other than one of Ghalib’s timeless lines...

Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ke har khwahish pe dam nikle,

Bahut niklay mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle

He elaborated on that by saying: “My interpretation of Ghalib’s saying changes every year. I learn something new; there are so many layers and labyrinths in there that every time I sort of, I kind of feel like I’ve learnt it again, that I have figured it out... it is not just your dreams being fulfilled, it is your ability to dream things that are worth dying for... the power of what we can do with digital technology. That has to be the source of our inspiration, at least it has been for me as we think about the dreams going forward."

Nadella’s address touched upon a number of issues, all important to him personally and in tune with the company’s vision for India.

He spoke about infusing cognitive technology into apps or services that were going to be built and of building bots, bots that have a fundamental understanding of human language—just like how you built websites in the past, just like how you built mobile apps in the past.

“You are going to build these bot interfaces that understand human dialogue. And, it’s going to be a pretty profound shift in how computing is experienced by everybody. It’s probably going to be the most democratizing force and make it accessible to anybody, who is 80 years old or an 8-year-old," said Nadella.

Rather than make boring presentations, Nadella showed a couple of videos, one on the possibilities of conversations-as-a-platform, to give the developers in the audience a feel for how the computing landscape would change. And the other on Microsoft’s HoloLens and the power of augmented reality.

He cited the example of how Nasa scientists were able to see the Rover move on Mars but the holographic output of the Rover is right there in their office.

“That means they can walk around and examine the soil on Mars as a holographic output. That transformation I think is what we can all look forward to. But most importantly, that’s what you will shape. It’s the ingenuity, the apps that you build that is going to, in fact, change our lives and our work. And it’s that creativity that we want to obviously be able to ignite."

He briefly recounted his experience of interacting with entrepreneurs and student developers who are creating new innovative solutions. He talked of meeting an entrepreneur who is building a solution wherein all documents starting from school passing certificates to mark sheets, can be digitally transcribed via the phone and transmitted digitally to universities.

Nadella also met two young developers, one of them a 17-year-old who has figured out how to take data from Nasa, conflate it with other information and see the spread of algae in Bay of Bengal. “Here’s a student who is taking information that is available, bringing it together—he wanted to have a real impact right here in terms of how we managed our climate," he said.

“And then I met an eight-year-old, and this is perhaps the time where I felt the most inadequate. This child prodigy’s dream is to create a society that knows how to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability. This goal has been translated into a novel game where you get to build cities, and in these cities, you can create factories, and depending on the type of power you use in the factory, you get points. So, if you build wind powered or solar powered, you get more points." Nadella echoed the child’s vision that had engineered a balance between using new technology to create a more equitable society and a more sustainable environment.

Nadella wrapped up by summing Microsoft’s mission in India. “Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. It’s not about celebrating our technologies, it is about really celebrating the technologies that you all in India create. In fact, I want us to be the platform creators that foster the ingenuity of what is happening in India," he said.

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