Hyderabad, December 28,2015: Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft visited Catalyst – A T-Hub building, early Monday morning. Satya Nadella was welcomed by Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao, Minister of IT and Panchayat Raj, Jayesh Ranjan, IT Secretary, Jay Krishnan, CEO, T-Hub, Srinivas Kollipara, Founder and COO, T-Hub, amongst other dignitaries.
As he walked around Catalyst, Satya took a moment to appreciate the space for entrepreneurs in his very own hometown.
As KTR introduced the Hyderabadi, Satya said with a laugh, “When I grew up here, there was no T-Hub probably, the closest to T was the Tank bund.” About T-Hub, he said, “It’s an amazing space for entrepreneurs and it’s also inspiring to see that the Government here is trying to build a facility such as this for startups.”
Satya Nadella also spoke about the three important points to keep in mind for startups – to not lose out on the concept that drives them, capability that you need to build to chase after that concept, have that persistence and to curate the culture they drive in their organisation on a constant basis. He added that culture can never be faked and the more you live it, the more sustainable your business approach becomes.
Talking about Microsoft’s involvement he said, “We are here to be a part of your success, with our accelerators where we aim to work with T-Hub. But most of all, I’m here to be inspired by your dreams.”
As he took a few queries from the crowd, he was asked how to deal with failure. The Microsoft CEO had a few inspiring words to share, “It’s not about the failure, it’s about learning from the failures. Failure itself cannot be celebrated. When I think about my career, my successes are built on learnings from failures,” he said.
Satya Nadella also spoke about the much talked about White Space technology as he emphasised on the importance of last mile connectivity. “One of the things I feel that is most important is connectivity. So, there needs to be a market-based solution and also a local entrepreneur that goes out and creates that last mile connectivity that offers affordable solutions,” said Satya.
Minister of IT and Panchayat Raj, KTR said, “We had a wonderful meeting with Mr Satya Nadella. We have explored several avenues of collaboration with Microsoft. They are already doing their bit through Microsoft ventures. We want to take their help in building the startup ecosystem here. He has shown a keen interest in the same. We are also collaborating to work on the White space technology that Microsoft has been pioneering. We want to bridge the last mile connectivity problem, but Satya Nadella wants local entrepreneurs to come forward and partner with Microsoft for this technology. We are also working on cloud enablement of a lot of small and medium enterprises to build a sustainable business environment. And last but not the least, to work on education, Telangana government is definitely focused on ensuring that the best of education is meted out for our children. So we are requesting Microsoft to help digitise the thousands of classrooms across the state.”
