TECHNOLOGY DESK: Microsoft is making “significant investment” in India and, unlike earlier, is building global products in the country, the company’s Chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella said on Wednesday.

“We have the largest development center outside of the United States. We have put significant capital investments in building out four large data centers…” Nadella said in an interview to India’s The Economic Times.

Nadella who was conferred with the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian award, in October last year said that historically, the company has built products elsewhere and sold them in India. This has changed and the company is now making global products here.

He added that it’s important for multinational corporations to create “local surplus” in the countries they are operating in.

Praising India’s technological progress, Nadella pointed out that as a percentage of GDP growth, India technology usage is very high. It’s not just the start-up unicorns but also the small businesses, public sector enterprises, large multinationals that are making intense use of digital technology in India to further create more digital technology for their users and customers.

“What’s happening with India and digital public goods is nothing other than astonishing. Nowhere else do I see such rigorous effort being put,” said Nadella, 55, who is only the third CEO to helm Microsoft in its 47-year history.

Widely credited with transforming the iconic software maker —now the world’s third most valuable company with a market capitalisation of $1.79 trillion behind Apple and Saudi Aramco— by pivoting to the cloud and mobile businesses, Nadella said that “the next big wave” is going to be the Artificial Intelligence .

“I’m very excited about what’s happening with AR-VR (Artificial and Virtual Reality) and Metaverse…” he said, adding that the Microsoft backed Open AI platform ChatGPT which has beco ..

“I’m very excited about what’s happening with AR-VR (Artificial and Virtual Reality) and Metaverse…” he said, adding that the Microsoft backed Open AI platform ChatGPT which has become all the rage recently will be integrated with several Microsoft products including its search engine Bing. This may put the software giant in direct competition with search behemoth Google.