We’re Not Obsessed With Competition, Focus Now On Customers: Microsoft’s Bhaskar Pramanik

If you’ve always associated the Microsoft brand with just Windows or Office, then perhaps you’re not alone. But over the years, things have changed at Microsoft. The company itself claims that it has now evolved from a software company to a digital transformation company.

Having said that, it’s not as though the company has become dormant in the software business. Earlier this year, it launched Windows 10 and Office 2016 and this week, it revamped both of its flagship products with a host of revolutionary features such as cloud-based Artificial Intelligence, Bing Maps in Excel and MyAnalytics to improve your performance at work.

It also launched complete cloud services in India from three local data centres. Bhaskar Pramanik, the chairman of Microsoft India told BloombergQuint that these data centres are game-changers as they are “hyperscale, hyperflexible, and highly secure”, and have been set up under the ‘Make in India’ programme after extensive talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

That’s not all. This year, Microsoft also experimented with internet connectivity via TV white spaces, data analytics and machine learning to help students, farmers and patients in its bid to empower Indians under Digital India.

Microsoft has been working with governments, individuals, and enterprises to participate in India’s digital transformation journey, Pramanik said.

The tech behemoth has partnered with the Andhra Pradesh government in a pilot project aimed at reducing high rates of school dropouts. Using complex data analytics, it has created an algorithm that identifies how many students could possibly drop out of school. Punjab has also signed up for this project.

The company is also keen that its popular video calling service Skype be used by central authorities to authenticate identity using the Aadhaar database.

“We have already shown the proof of concept. What we need to do is actually take a few scenarios and show that, whether it is KYC or any kind of transaction which requires any kind of identity on both sides....So, we are actually looking at the possibilities and talking to various government users as to how we can do some pilots,” Pramanik said.

Pramanik is due to retire in March next year and when asked about his future plans, he had something interesting to say.