Microsoft's Satya Nadella hails Aadhaar for reaching billion Indians; compares growth to Facebook, Windows, Android

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has hailed the India's biometrics-based identification initiative Aadhaar for reaching over a billion beneficiaries across the country, and rivalling the growth seen by tech giants like Windows, Facebook or Android.

In his book 'Hit Refersh' released during the Microsoft Ignite 2017, Satya Nadella commended the digital and technological advancements that have come across in India. "India is leapfrogging from once being an infrastructure-poor country to now leading in digital technology," Nadella wrote in his book that hit shelves today.

The 50-year-old Nadella also praised IndiaStack, the Aadhaar-based digital ecosystem for bringing technological advancements for all Indian citizens. IndiaStack is a set of APIs (application programming interface) that allows governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilise an unique digital Infrastructure to solve India s hard problems towards presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery. Nadella also recalled his meeting with former UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani to discuss future plan of action for IndiaStack in his new book.

He also mentioned Enlightiks, a startup that was acquired last year by Practo, a leading e-health company in India.

"They are using the latest cloud technology and AI from Microsoft to create a state-of-the-art health care diagnostics service that can, for example, detect an Atrial fibrillation event before it happens because of the rich data going from the personal device of the patient directly to the cloud," Nadella said.

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Technology to move society forward

Meanwhile, Nadella also stressed on technology that would better what human beings could do and open ways to ensure more human participation. The Indian-origin CEO stated that that technology should not undermine humanity but provide even more levels of inclusiveness.

We definitely want better productivity and efficiency but not at the cost of degrading humanity, Nadella said in a keynote address at the Microsoft's Ignite 2017 in Orlando, Florida yesterday.

"As we talk about technology, one of the things we need in particular as technologists and decision-makers is to keep in mind the timeless values that drive what we do. How are we going to use technology to empower people?," he said.

Nadella said that technology should be easy to reach to for people. "...I'm most excited about accessibility," he said.

"We think about it at the global scale, but most importantly, for us, it's not about our technology, it is about what you can do with technology to create your own technology, to have real impact in moving our society and economy forward. That's what is central to our mission," Nadella added.

"How can we bring more people into as full participants in our society, in our economy, using technology? How can we make sure that there's no bias built into technology? How can we build trust in how we secure data, privacy, control and transparency?" exclaimed the Microsoft CEO Nadella said as he stressed on empowering the last man through technology.

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Mission to empower every person

Nadella further added, "These timeless values and this opportunity of digital transformation is what grounds us at Microsoft in our mission -- our mission to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more."

In his keynote address, Nadella emphasised on how Microsoft is endeavouring to make sure that the technologies they build are not oriented towards an individual alone, but the institutions built by these individuals.

"There isn't a single industry that isn't being transformed. We collectively have the opportunity to lead in this transformation," said Nadella.

"Where before we held a worldview of a mobile-first, cloud-first world, that worldview is evolving to the new technology paradigm of the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge," he said.

He said three characteristics define this shift: the move to multi-device, multi-sensory interactions; artificial intelligence driving predictive insights across devices; and a new fabric of serverless, or distributed, computing power.

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(With PTI inputs)