Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ connection with the Indian Institutes of Technology goes way back... 👀
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00:00Well, I'm now looking at India in a far broader way than just the Microsoft lens, you know.
00:08One shot, please.
00:10We need fantastic Indian innovation, and Indian innovation really gets stronger all the time.
00:30It's been a long time since I've been here at IIT Delhi, and it's phenomenal all the
00:54great progress that has taken place since then.
01:00In a sense, my first connection with India came because of the IITs.
01:06One of the great people who worked for me said that he would go over to India and hire
01:11about 15 people who'd been students at IIT, and that would strengthen Microsoft's engineering
01:18capabilities.
01:19At the time, we only had a few hundred people, but even so, it was so hard to find amazing
01:26engineers.
01:27I thought that was a good idea.
01:29At the time, the Indian press said this was a terrible thing, because all these great
01:36people were leaving the country.
01:39The US press said this was a terrible thing, all these people coming from another country.
01:47But I think now, over 25 years later, we can say that was a phenomenal thing, both
01:56for India and for the United States, and of course, for Microsoft itself.
02:03A number of those people are the ones who came back to India, started up the offices
02:09here.
02:10In India this week, I was down in Hyderabad at the biggest site for Microsoft development
02:17in India, celebrating the 25th anniversary at a time where we now have, Microsoft now
02:23has more than 25,000 amazing people here in India doing work.
02:28If I think back on my Microsoft career and the wonderful people that I got to work with
02:34and why I enjoyed that so much, a very high percentage of them are people who joined
02:40from India.
02:42First and foremost, though, in that list would have to be Satya Nadella, who we're so lucky
02:48to have as the CEO.
02:51Well, I'm now looking at India in a far broader way than just the Microsoft lens.
03:02I'm lucky enough through the work of the foundation to look at innovators in India who can help
03:09with all kinds of problems, starting with health, but also agriculture, gender, climate,
03:20so many areas that we need fantastic Indian innovation.
03:26And Indian innovation really gets stronger all the time.
03:32One thing you can count on is that because India's a big country, people understand it's
03:36innovation.
03:37It's not really valuable at small scale, nor is it valuable if the cost is so high that
03:46only a small percentage of the people can get access to it.
03:51And so this is a fascinating time.
03:53The need for innovation to deal with many different challenges that I'll talk about
04:00is greater than ever.
04:03But the pace of innovation is also rising to meet that challenge.