Who is Satya Nadella? Biography of Nadella

Everyone has heard about Microsoft Corp. but very few people know about Satya Nadella- the man behind Microsoft. It was founded by Bill Gates who was also the Co-Founder and CEO of Microsoft for a long time. Currently, Satya Narayana Nadella is the Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft. Under his lead, Microsoft has seen tremendous growth. Satya Narayan Nadella has made Microsoft Cloud Computing revenue more than Google, the subscribers are currently surpassing Netflix and occupying a trillion-dollar capital market.

Before reading the success story of Satya Nadella, let’s take a look at some important information:

Birthplace	Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India
Age	54 (2022)
Nationality	Indian
Citizenship	United States
Source of Wealth	Microsoft
Marital Status	Married
Spouse	Anupama Nadella

Pc: Orissa Post

The Success Story of Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella is a part of Microsoft since 1992 when he was a young engineer. Earlier, he used to work for sun microsystems, which is a company that sold computer software and Information Technology Services. Nadella quit Sun Microsystems to join Microsoft. It took him years to secure a place in the executive role. He was made the Vice President of Microsoft Central in 2000.

The Indian origin engineer has proved his worth in every sense at each step in the company. With his hard work and dedication, he reached heights and then there was no looking back. In no time he got promoted to the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Business Solutions. It didn’t take much time for him to reach the position of Senior Vice President of Microsoft online services.

By 2007 he was put in charge of Bing and earlier versions of Microsoft Office along with Xbox live broadband gaming network and the Office 365 subscription-based services. His growth was like a rising graph. By the year 2011, he became the president of the Tools and Server division. Under this new division, he started overlooking the cloud platform and other products for the company’s data centres like SQL Server Database and the Windows Server. At that point in time, the Server and Tools division was earning a great revenue of around $16.6 billion. Nadella proved his worth by multiplying the revenue generated under his leadership to $20.3 billion within 2 years.

Pc: GeekWire

Finally, the big day arrived for Nadella when he was chosen as the CEO of Microsoft on February 4th, 2014. This was after Steve Ballmer stepped down from the post of CEO of Microsoft. This decision was taken by Bill Gates who is the Founder of Microsoft along with the opinion of Ballmer. Nadella, with his intuitive and efficient working approaches, was able to put the Microsoft firm out of its difficult phase. Under his Reign, Microsoft was able to regain its position as a giant in the market.

Do you know how Nadella was able to make Microsoft flourish again?

The major changes that were installed by Satya Nadella as the CEO of Microsoft include the following:

1. Under his reign, he released Microsoft Office for Apple’s iPad.

2. He worked on Microsoft Outlook apps and released them for iPhone and Android.

3. After the big disaster of Windows 8, he skipped Windows 9 and directly released Windows 10 which was a huge success.

4. Nadella used the Linux operating system on the Azure cloud.

5. He was behind the acquisition of Mojang which is a company created by Minecraft.

6. He came up with the Microsoft Surface Book which was the company’s first laptop.

Satya Nadella’s Early life and education

He was born on 19th August 1967 in the Southern- Indian city of Hyderabad. He completed his schooling at Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet. Nadella tried to get into the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). However, he failed in his attempt. Nadella got into the Birla Institute of Technology also known as BITS, situated in Mesra. He also got into the Manipal Institute of technology. He chose Manipal Institute of Technology and pursued his bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from there in 1998. He was keen to learn about software and Technology. Due to a lack of practical knowledge in Indian Institutes, he decided to pursue his MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Later on, Nadella also pursued a degree in MBA from the University of Chicago booth school of business.

Personal life

Pc: Q13 Fox

Satya is married to Anupama. Many people think that it was a love marriage but that’s not the case. Their marriage was partly arranged. Anupama and Nadella’s fathers knew each other from their Indian Administrative Service, as they were batchmates. Now, Satya and Anu are happily married with a family of three children. They live in a house situated in Bellevue, Washington. The couple owns a Seattle Sounders FC and a Major League Soccer club as partners. Nadella has interests in literature, an avid reader of both American as well as Indian poetry. He is also a religious fan of cricket.

Satya Nadella and his wife lost their son Zain Nadella on February 28, 2022.  The 26-year-old born on august 13 1996 had Cerebral Palsy since his birth.

Do you know Nadella once gave away his green card?

A romantic story, an act of love by Nadella is quite famous among the public. It happened in 1994 after Satya was recently married. Nadella once gave away his green card for the love of his life. After marrying Anupama who lived in India, Nadella wanted her to shift abroad with him. Sadly due to a long-awaited stretch of people and lines, she couldn’t get her visa approved. She was only given a temporary Visa to visit for a short duration. Taking this situation to his lawyer, Nadella discussed what could be done to solve the matter. To his surprise, his lawyer suggested a very risky proposition. He was asked to return his Green card. This way there was a provision to apply as an H1B worker. H1B workers were allowed to bring over their spouses.

“Such is the perverse logic of this immigration,” says Nadella about the situation in his book.

He went to the US embassy and took this risk. He mentions in his book that the clerk was amazed by his willingness to return the green card. It was such a rare view to observe. This all worked out well for him and his family in the end. Now, he holds a green card of American citizenship.

Recently, Nadella has somehow managed to convince Donald Trump to look into the loopholes of H- 1B and work towards reforming it. This will make it easier for Microsoft as well as many other countries to bring qualified talents overboard to America.

What is the net worth of Satya Nadella?

The total worth of Satya Nadella is estimated to be at least 420 Million dollars as of Jan 2022. Nadella earns $3 Million+ for his post of CEO and Director at Microsoft.

What is the salary of Satya Nadella?

Pc: CNBC

As Nadella is on the highest post within the company, CEO and Director, he is receiving compensation of $42,910,200. He is the highest-paid executive at Microsoft.

What is the age of Satya Nadella?

Nadella is 54 years old, handling Microsoft since 2014. In total Microsoft comprises 13 older and 4 younger executives. John Thompson, age 70, is the oldest executive at Microsoft Corp. who is now Independent Non-Executive Chairman of the Board.

Awards and recognitions presented to Nadella

Nadella was honoured as the Person of the Year by Financial Times in 2019. “Microsoft was at risk of technological irrelevance but the chief executive has presided over an era of stunning wealth creation”

Nadella was included in Barron’s World’s 30 best CEOs list year after year. He was recognized by CNBC-TV18’s India Business Leader Awards held in Mumbai as the Global Indian Business Icon in the year 2020.

Publications

In 2017, a book co-authored by Satya was released. ‘Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone’ was co-authored by Nadella, Greg Shaw, and Jill Tracie Nichols. This autobiography revolves around Satya’s life and his viewpoint towards technology and the future. It also includes stories from his personal life.

Some philanthropic initiatives by Satya Nadella

Nadella is a member of the board of trustees at the University of Chicago. He is also one of the board members of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The funding of the publication ‘Hit Refresh’ is sent directly to Microsoft Philanthropies.

Acquisition and Take-overs

Pc: Huffpost

Since Nadella took the command of Microsoft as a CEO, his first acquisition was Mojang, a Swedish game company profoundly known for its computer game Minecraft in a $2.5 billion deal. His first-ever major task was to oversee Nokia Corp.’s mobile-device business acquisition in a deal of $7.2 billion. This transaction was already announced by Microsoft in 2013 when Nadella was an employee like others. In April 2014 this deal closed despite the reservations of various Microsoft executives including Nadella.

In the history of Microsoft, the biggest decision ever to eliminate 18,000 positions was taken shortly after the Nokia deal was closed. The majority of layoffs involved Nokia. Satya purchased Xamarin in 2014 for an undisclosed price.

Later in 2016, Nadella purchased LinkedIn which is the largest professional business network. This social website was bought for $26.2 billion. Recently, on October 26, 2018, GitHub was acquired by Microsoft for US$7.5 billion.

Set-backs and problems faced by Satya Nadella

During an event on Women in Computing in October 2014, Nadella’s statement caused a big stir in the community. He became an active part of a controversy after saying that women should not ask for a raise and should trust the system. He was excessively criticized for his words and trolled about it excessively on social media. Later, after a public apology made via Twitter and a mail sent by him to all the Microsoft employees admitting his wrongfully said words, he was left off the hook.

Shaking hand with competition

Pc: The Hacker News

We have seen many companies fighting for more publicity among their competitors. However, in the case of Microsoft, Nadella followed the ‘Keep your friends close but enemies closer’ quote seriously. Despite being a competition of Microsoft, he has always emphasized working with competing major tech giants such as Apple Inc., Salesforce, IBM, and Dropbox. Before Nadella became the CEO there were plenty of campaigns running against the Linux operating system. Satya proclaimed in his term that “Microsoft ❤️ Linux”, alongside in 2016 Microsoft also joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member.

Growth of Microsoft under the Leadership of Nadella

As Nadella took over the command, Microsoft changed its mission statement to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more”. A cultural shift was observed at Microsoft as he emphasized on empathy, collaboration, and ‘growth mindset’. A culture was promoted that continuously motivated continual learning and growth.

Since his holding the command as CEO, the stock of Microsoft tripled with an annual growth of 27% by September 2018.

What’s Satya Nadella’s mailing address?

The official mailing address of Satya Nadella registered with Microsoft is as follows C/O MICROSOFT CORPORATION, ONE MICROSOFT WAY, REDMOND, WA, 98052-5399.

About Microsoft

Microsoft was Co-founded by Paul Gardner Allen and William Henry Gates III in 1975. A corporation that deals majorly in the development and support of software, services, devices, and solutions. Microsoft has various business segments via which it operates such as Productivity and Business Processes; Intelligent Cloud; and More Personal Computing. The segment including Productivity and Business Processes deals with the products and services that fall under productivity, communication, and information services. It includes a wide variety and range of devices.

The cloud segment is an intelligently designed system dealing with public, private, and hybrid serve products. The modern products are focusing solely on the end-users, developers, and IT professionals concerning a wide range of devices.

Except for the above-mentioned products and services the company also actively offers operating systems; cross-device productivity applications; server applications; business solution applications; desktop and server management tools; software development tools; video games; personal computers, tablets; gaming and entertainment consoles; other intelligent devices; and related accessories. Microsoft Crop. is headquartered in Redmond, WA.

Conclusion

Life is indeed a ride of thick and thin. Nadella passed every step with elegant and well-developed strategies, leading him to success. He is a role model for many who dream alike. The success story of Satya Nadella is a proof that dreams do come true if you work hard to achieve them.