Microsoft in China & India
Microsoft in China and India, 1993–2007 It was early summer 2007. Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft
Corporation, had just completed a transcontinental phone call with Orlando Ayala, Will Poole, Tim
Chen, Ravi Venkatesan (HBS MBA 1992), and Ya-Qin Zhang, all members of the senior management team overseeing Microsoft’s growth in China and India. A decade ago, Mundie had begun to broaden
Microsoft’s forays into both countries. Now, he continued to mentor the China and India teams.
Mundie saw his role as one that mitigated ventures that others within Microsoft might find too risky to undertake and thus to try to fill “white spaces” in Microsoft’s offerings. Chen and Venkatesan headed Microsoft operations in China and India after successful careers with, respectively, Motorola in China and Cummins in India. Ayala and Poole were Microsoft veterans now focused on middle- and bottom-of-the-pyramid products and services, and Zhang headed Microsoft’s research activities in China. Mundie had reason to be pleased. Over the past decade, Microsoft had established a successful footprint spanning research, development, and sales in both China and India, and just a few days back, on April 19, 2007, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates had unveiled an ambitious plan for the future.
Addressing the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in Beijing in the presence of dignitaries like
Nobel laureate Mohammed Yunus, Gates had outlined the Beijing Declaration, which stated
Microsoft’s aim to increase the number of people with access to computers from 1 billion in 2007 to
2 billion by 2015. It had been 31 years since Gates’s founding dream for Microsoft, “a computer on every desk and in every home.” Microsoft had grown its China and India revenues threefold in the past three years. China and
India had won the “best large subsidiary” and “best emerging subsidiary” awards, respectively, at
Microsoft’s annual global sales meeting in 2006. More importantly,
Corporation, had just completed a transcontinental phone call with Orlando Ayala, Will Poole, Tim
Chen, Ravi Venkatesan (HBS MBA 1992), and Ya-Qin Zhang, all members of the senior management team overseeing Microsoft’s growth in China and India. A decade ago, Mundie had begun to broaden
Microsoft’s forays into both countries. Now, he continued to mentor the China and India teams.
Mundie saw his role as one that mitigated ventures that others within Microsoft might find too risky to undertake and thus to try to fill “white spaces” in Microsoft’s offerings. Chen and Venkatesan headed Microsoft operations in China and India after successful careers with, respectively, Motorola in China and Cummins in India. Ayala and Poole were Microsoft veterans now focused on middle- and bottom-of-the-pyramid products and services, and Zhang headed Microsoft’s research activities in China. Mundie had reason to be pleased. Over the past decade, Microsoft had established a successful footprint spanning research, development, and sales in both China and India, and just a few days back, on April 19, 2007, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates had unveiled an ambitious plan for the future.
Addressing the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in Beijing in the presence of dignitaries like
Nobel laureate Mohammed Yunus, Gates had outlined the Beijing Declaration, which stated
Microsoft’s aim to increase the number of people with access to computers from 1 billion in 2007 to
2 billion by 2015. It had been 31 years since Gates’s founding dream for Microsoft, “a computer on every desk and in every home.” Microsoft had grown its China and India revenues threefold in the past three years. China and
India had won the “best large subsidiary” and “best emerging subsidiary” awards, respectively, at
Microsoft’s annual global sales meeting in 2006. More importantly,