Microsoft's Satya Nadella says India ready to build mass-scale apps

Satya Nadela, the Microsoft CEO, feels Indian IT sector has come up with the next level artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that can be produced in the form mass scalable apps and will further drastically improve the quality and reach of education, healthcare, credit and more.

In a discussion with Nandan Nilekani, one of the architects of the country's IT infrastructure, Nadella said that such power and capability was not available earlier.

He also pointed out that his company has analysed the call centre data of all citizen services in Punjab to identify major public problems. While citing his company’s work with the Andhra Pradesh government that used machine learning to identify reasons for students dropping out of high school, he said that such public-private partnerships can significantly empower the billion-plus people in India.

The IT infrastructure, Nadela referred to included Aadhaar, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) that has enabled apps like Bhim to allow bank to transfer funds in a jiffy, the eKYC (electronic know your customer) that has enabled companies like Reliance Jio to enrol customers in 2-3 minutes, and eSign that allows any document to be signed electronically using Aadhaar.

He also said that he was also overwhelmed by the entrepreneurial spirit in India, and said Indian startups working in the AI space were changing lives and solving everyday problems.