Microsoft has appointed Rajiv Kumar as the new managing director for its Indian research and development arm, Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt Ltd (MIRPL). Kumar, who is currently vice president of Microsoft’s Experiences and Devices (E+D) Group, will take over from Anil Bhansali, who held this role for the last six years.
Bhansali will continue as the corporate vice president of cloud and enterprise division and will relocate to Redmond, USA, a company statement said on Monday.
Kumar has been at Microsoft for 27 years. He joined the company in the US in 1992 and moved up from being a developer in the visual basic team to development manager then the product unit manager for the content management server team, which became a part of the SharePoint server. He moved to India in 2005.
Kumar holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from IIT Roorkee and a master’s in the same domain from the University of Texas, Austin.
“He is known as a leader that creates clarity of vision, generates energy in the team and delivers success. Over the years he has innovated on a variety of products and built large world class engineering organizations rooted in the foundation of a strong culture of Microsoft,” the company statement said. Kumar has also been instrumental in India hiring for Microsoft.
Microsoft India Development Center (IDC) in MIRPL, which was set up in 1998, is one of Microsoft’s largest R&D centers outside Microsoft’s headquarters at Redmond.
The center engages in building products and services for driving digital innovation that helps transform individuals and organizations across all industry verticals, and building solutions for empowering emerging markets like India in areas like healthcare, agriculture and education.