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Nadella will address two AI-related conferences in Bengaluru and Mumbai during his visit, which also includes meetings in New Delhi, said one of the sources. Sign up here. Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment. Like other big tech executives, the Indian-born Nadella enjoys strong popularity in a country where engineering degrees are seen as a path to prosperity. News of his planned visit comes as New Delhi and Washington are trying to iron out trade differences, and as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his officials are promoting the use of local apps over U.S. firms. Among those is Zoho, which offers cheaper alternatives to cloud-based software tools made by Microsoft. During his January visit to India, Nadella announced a $3 billion investment in AI and cloud capacity, and met Modi. Google this month said it would invest $15 billion over five years to set up an AI data centre in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Nadella will also likely meet key customers and India employees during his visit, the second source said. Microsoft has more than 20,000 employees across 10 Indian cities. Reporting by Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil. Editing by Mark Potter Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Aditya Kalra is the Company News Editor for Reuters in India, overseeing business coverage and reporting stories on some of the world's biggest companies. He joined Reuters in 2008 and has in recent years written stories on challenges and strategies of a wide array of companies -- from Amazon, Google and Walmart to Xiaomi, Starbucks and Reliance. He also extensively works on deeply-reported and investigative business stories. Based in Bengaluru, Munsif Vengattil leads Reuters' technology news coverage in India. He tracks themes at the intersection of tech, business, and labor. A reporter for nine years, Munsif has written extensively on India's electronics manufacturing aspirations and its tech policy space, AI and election interference, satellite internet, streaming wars, and data breaches. His stories also focus on investigating corporate strategies and revealing India-specific initiatives and challenges of the biggest of tech firms - from Apple, Facebook, and Google, to Foxconn, Samsung, and Nvidia.
