Bill Gates visits the Microsoft India Development Center at Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates visited the company's India Development Centre (IDC) in Hyderabad on Wednesday, a centre of innovation that he envisioned in 1998.

IDC is celebrating its 25th year of groundbreaking research, engineering, and development, marking its pivotal role in shaping world-class products such as Azure, Windows, Office, Bing, Copilot, and other AI applications.

"It was rewarding to watch Bill address some of India's brightest engineering minds at IDC, our biggest asset," Rajiv Kumar, Managing Director, Microsoft IDC, and CVP, Experiences + Devices India, said in a statement.

"Echoing his optimism over the opportunity for an AI-powered India, IDC is excited to drive innovation from India for Microsoft - from AI and cloud to security and gaming," he added.

Earlier this week, Gates announced his plans to visit India in a LinkedIn post, saying, "I can’t wait to learn about how India is finding innovative new ways to advance health, digital public infrastructure, and climate to improve the lives of billions."

In his blog, the Microsoft co-founder mentioned that he is visiting this week to learn about "how we can continue working with India to help its ideas and inventions reach everyone who needs them, no matter where they live."

"This will be a main topic when I meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week," Gates added.

Gates' visit underscores Microsoft's commitment to India's tech ecosystem. With IDC's ongoing contributions to cutting-edge technologies, the centre remains a vital hub for Microsoft's global innovation efforts. The visit also highlights Gates' interest in India's advancements in health, infrastructure, and climate, aligning with Microsoft's focus on societal impact.

It may be recalled that Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, during his recent visit to India, had highlighted the country's unique potential to realise the promise of AI.

This sentiment is particularly relevant with IDC delivering pioneering research and development across various domains, including AI applications, Microsoft said.

Earlier this month, Nadella had said the momentum around developers and development in India is "unbelievable", as he outlined his vision on AI transformation imperatives in areas such as healthcare and education, and spoke of innovation around Copilot artificial intelligence assistant.

Nadella had also announced the expansion of the 'code without barriers' initiative to India which he said would help 75,000 women developers by 2024. "India is a place where momentum around developers, development is unbelievable," Nadella had said in Bengaluru. Microsoft's top boss had also spoken about unlocking productivity across the business with Microsoft Copilot, building transformation AI solutions with Microsoft Azure, and AI safety. At that time, Nadella said he was excited to see new, innovative startups in India.

India is expected to overtake the US as the largest developer community on GitHub by 2027, Nadella stated. "Today as we speak, India is number two only next to the United States in terms of the total number of developers on GitHub and it's going to cross in 2028, I believe, or 2027... it is going to cross... So it's going to be the place where the most number of developers are going to be in." Nadella had said, "It is just awesome to see the human capital of this country really embrace this new platform and effectively lead the new platform shifts."