Bill Gates Finds a Seattle in India

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> >>Mr. Gates said today: "In India there is very interesting energy around

>taking technology and making it relevant to all citizens, much more than

>I've seen anywhere else in the world."

>

>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/international/asia/14INDI.html

>

>NEW YORK TIMES, NOVEMBER 14, 2002

>

>BILL GATES FINDS A SEATTLE IN INDIA

>

>By AMY WALDMAN

>

>BANGALORE, India, Nov. 13 — Old if they were over 30, the elite of India's

>high-tech revolution sat today in a food court at Infosys Technologies

>Ltd., Domino's pizzas stacked in the background, awaiting their guru. The

>air was heavy with expectation, which, when the man himself appeared,

>turned into a standing ovation.

>

>Bill Gates was in the house.

>

>Microsoft's chairman and, more importantly for this crowd, its chief

>software architect, was making his first visit to India's technology

>capital, where his example has long provided inspiration, and his company

>has been a key customer, supplier, and partner.

>

>"It was long overdue," said N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and chief

>mentor of Infosys Technologies, India's pioneering software development

>company, who had lobbied Mr. Gates to come to Bangalore.

>

>Young software developers, most of them only a few years older than Mr.

>Gates was when he dropped out of Harvard University to found his company,

>vied for the chance to see him. At Infosys, where only 1,000 of 5,000

>developers were allowed to attend his talk, the rest watched it via

>Webcast.

>

>For Mr. Gates, it was a window into an India not much different from

>Seattle. In the last 10 years, Bangalore has become a hub of an enormous

>software services industry. It has also become an island of sorts within

>India, with thousands of young people frequenting its bars and restaurants,

>occupying its new apartments, and navigating its scooter-clogged traffic

>when they are not staring into computer screens on software campuses.

>

>Accompanied by Mr. Murthy, Mr. Gates toured the 52-acre Infosys campus —

>billed as the world's second-largest software campus after Microsoft — with

>its mini-golf course and swimming pool, its lake and light-filled

>architecture.

>

>While Mr. Gates has long had relationships with Mr. Murthy and executives

>at Wipro Ltd., the other top software company he visited today, this was a

>chance for the generation of Indians who have vaulted into a new India to

>lay eyes on the man who, from thousands of miles away, did much to shape

>it.

>

>Both campuses are full of 20-somethings like Nalini Kumari Boini, 22, the

>daughter of a housewife and a government employee. She is fresh out of

>college and deep into programming for .Net, Microsoft's Web services

>strategy. Mr. Gates has contended that .Net will transform computing in the

>next decade by letting businesses tie various Web-based services together

>through a common structure that will operate regardless of differences in

>operating systems or software programs.

>

>"He's built Microsoft, he's launching so many technologies which will

>impact society, some of these technologies are going to change the world,"

>she said.

>

>Mr. Gates seemed as interested in the quality of the young peoples' lives

>as in the architecture of their software. He asked Mr. Murthy about how

>employees got to the campus (by bus and by car, with more cars all the

>time), where they lived and where they ate.

>

>Usually one of the cafeterias, for about 40 cents a meal, he was told.

>

>"Subsidized?" he asked.

>

>No, no subsidies.

>

>"Oh really?" a surprised Mr. Gates said, quickly calculating that employees

>could eat for about a dollar a day.

>He then drove the short distance to the 30-acre campus of Wipro, another

>Microsoft partner and client. As many as 2,000 employees were arrayed in an

>immaculate outdoor amphitheater.

>

>Among them was Srinivasan Iyer, 23, a software developer who described his

>family as "middle class — not one dollar more, not one dollar less." With a

>monthly take-home pay of almost $3,000, he is well on his way to surpassing

>that status.

>

>He had benefited from an education at one of India's top engineering

>colleges, and counted himself lucky to have a job at Wipro. But he also

>said it was not about luck: Wipro was a meritocracy in its purest form, he

>said proudly.

>

>In the distance, three new towers were under construction, to grow Wipro's

>campus in Electronics City — the industrial park it inhabits, along with

>Infosys and about 100 other companies — to accommodate 15,000 people.

>

>Among the tasks the company will undertake for Microsoft, said Vivek Paul,

>Wipro's chief executive for technologies, is performing basic business

>functions, essentially back office work, one of the fastest-growing

>industries in India.

>

>Mr. Gates, meanwhile, also continued Microsoft's campaign to interest

>government agencies in India in digitizing their functions, like putting

>their records on computers. He signed a memorandum of understanding with

>the chief minister of the state of Karnataka, S.M. Krishna, that said that

>all government services for Bangalore residents would be done using

>Microsoft products.

>

>Mr. Paul said he welcomed Mr. Gates' investments in trying to close India's

>digital divide. But he confessed to a twinge of sorts at the welcome Mr.

>Gates had received. Indians, he said, too often looked for a "messiah" to

>cure the country's ills. Mr. Murthy, a serious fan of Mr. Gates, agreed,

>saying India had answered to outside masters for so long that it had lost

>its commitment to problem-solving on its own.

>

>But the high-tech world of Bangalore both men inhabit is a place where

>problem-solving is an art. Mr. Gates said today: "In India there is very

>interesting energy around taking technology and making it relevant to all

>citizens, much more than I've seen anywhere else in the world."

 

 

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