Microsoft Shuffles Top India Executives Amid Heated Competition From Rivals Amazon, Google

This story was published on the Benzinga India Portal.

Microsoft Corporation's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Indian arm is shaking things up in its upper ranks, with several key executives being promoted.

What Happened? Amid a major rejig at the tech major’s operations, the India business’ current managing director and chief operating officer have likely been promoted, the Economic Times reported.

Irina Ghose, formerly the COO, has been elevated to the position of managing director for India. Meanwhile, Sashi Sreedharan, the current managing director, has been given a larger role within the organization.

Navtez Bal, previously the executive director of public sector, will assume the COO position, while Venkat Krishnan, formerly in charge of partnerships, will replace him.

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Microsoft confirmed to the business daily the promotions of Ghose, Bal and Krishnan, which came into effect on July 1, coinciding with the start of the company’s financial year.

The report suggests that Puneet Chandok, former head of AWS India, who resigned earlier this year, maybe joining Microsoft, although no official statement has been made.

While Microsoft remains the leader in the enterprise cloud space, it faces strong competition from Amazon.com, Inc's (NASDAQ: AMZN) cloud arm Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) Google Cloud in India. The country presents a significant opportunity to these Big Tech firms, with a growing number of small and medium businesses increasing their cloud and digital investments since the pandemic.

Anant Maheshwari, president of Microsoft India, recently highlighted the company’s accelerated focus on expanding its presence in India. Maheshwari emphasized the potential in sectors such as banking and financial services (BFSI) and emerging companies, where Microsoft’s products continue to gain traction.

He also said that Microsoft was integrating generative AI solutions like ChatGPT for clients in India, with applications across various industries, including BFSI and healthcare.

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