The Microsoft India story began in 1990 and has grown steadily since then. Bhaskar Pramanik, who took charge as Chairman of Microsoft Corp. (India) Pvt. Ltd in 2011, is responsible for the company’s marketing, operations and business development efforts. In an interview, he reflects on Microsoft’s journey over the past five years, the core aspirations that he lives by and where he would like to see the company five years hence.

Edited excerpts:

What have been the most important changes in Microsoft in the past five years?

We are no longer what people used to call the ‘Windows and Office’ company. I still remember when I had joined some five years back, people associating Microsoft with that and then I had to spend another half an hour explaining why that was not correct and there was a lot more to the company than just being Windows and Office. What is interesting is that if I ever asked a cab driver ‘what do you know about Microsoft?’, he would say: ‘Oh, that is the Bill Gates company.’ And till today, that is the way we are looked at. You go to a village and they will say the same thing because the social impact we have had is still related to the work which Bill Gates has done in India. And that is a positive and pleasant association with the company.

Six years ago, we were focusing on putting a PC on every desk. From that mission, our new mission is how can we empower every individual and organization on the planet to achieve more? And that is a completely different mission. One was technology-focused, that talked about personal computing, which was very successful for nearly 40 years.

Now, the mission statement has changed and the reason for that is the environment has changed and we now live in a cloud-first, mobile-first world. Being mobile-first is not about a mobile phone but about the mobility of the experience. That is important because if you think about what most users are looking for, whether they are consumers or office workers, is the ability to have the same experience, irrespective of what kind of device they have. And it does not matter if you are in the office or at home, you should be able to have the same experience.

The second is what we call cloud-first, where data resides in the cloud and enables the data access in many different forms. Today, for example, what you have on your phone is far more than a hardware specification because you are connected to somebody’s cloud and so you can keep your photographs on the cloud and store important emails access on cloud. If you were to buy hardware that supports the features you have on the phone, it would at least cost you 10 times more. So, how do you achieve this? We have outlined three big bets to achieve this mission.

These are our core aspirations:

The first is reinventing productivity and processes for enterprises, industries and users. Second is creating new forms of personal computing, which means the way you interact with the computer. Will you interact with it via voice, keyboard or touch? Think about HoloLens, augmented reality, Surface… these are all different forms of what we would call personal computing. How do we enhance accessibility so that everyone can access computing, and this is important for us. And finally, building the intelligent cloud. We call it intelligent because we are empowering the cloud with the computing, storage, network to enable it to start using artificial intelligence (AI) to build upon what we are asking it to do. For example, if you think about Cortana, it is an AI bot that you can speak to and give instructions so it will actually pull that out for you, so it is a consumer digital assistant, but there are many other forms of Cortana.

Tell us about the Microsoft India story and your perspective on the India operations.

We have moved towards the digital transformation of our customers much ahead than what we have seen elsewhere. In fact, I am proud to say that when ( Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft Corp.) was here last in May, he said, this (India) is perhaps one of the few countries (outside of the US), where all the examples of digital transformation have happened. From a business perspective, we have seen our business grow, in terms of sales and market share, in terms of growth of the cloud, so we have a balanced growth.

Our customer satisfaction is at an all-time high, partner satisfaction numbers are better than what they were 3-4 years ago, attrition is in single digit, so Microsoft is an employer of choice.

What are some of the challenges? And where would you like to see Microsoft India five years down the line?

The biggest challenge is how do I increase my growth from the present mid-teens to the mid-20s? Clearly, our focus area for growth is the small and medium sector. Our services businesses is in the mid-30s and we want to see it continue to grow. And with our story on digital transformation, we are revamping our partner ecosystem, we are looking at new markets and new segments that will also help our business in the enterprise segment.

Source: Mint