Keeping the emerging economies on its priority list of business expansion, Microsoft, the global leader in software industry puts Indian market on top of the growth trajectory.
The company is eyeing an aggressive geographical expansion and plans to open new offices at 65 locations covering tier two towns across India by this financial year. This would be an addition to its existing network touchpoints in 200 cities.
Talking to Business Standard, the Chairman Emerging Markets and Chief Advisor to the COO, Orlando Ayala said that Microsoft has identified 70 countries emerging at different degrees of growth. India and China acquire the significant edge over other due to market size. He added that India due to its sizeable young population, knowledge of English language and self employed workforce offers better business propositions for the company.
He apprised that Cloud Computing (a solution that provides IT communication tools without investing in hardware) has been very successful in India and with in a short span of close to thee weeks (when the solution was rolled out) over 1000 business entrepreneurs are using it.
Talking about the utility of Cloud Computing in public sector, he added that a cost cutting of 30% can be achieved by adopting this solution for the government officials.
Microsoft is in discussions with state Government representatives for this new technology.
He said that Microsoft aims to penetrate into Indian market by taking into its ambit all kinds of users.
So differnt outreach programmes like Shiksha for education sector (mainly for underprivilged students), Vikas for empowering SMBs, Dreams Park for high schools and tertiarry education, Jyoti for women and youth exposed to risk and Kshamta for the defence personnel are being pursued. This, according to Orlando, has helped to create a demand for the software solutions and would help them generate a sustainable demand.
"We have touched 25 million students and half a million teachers under Shiksha and aim to touch 1,00,000 defence personnel for ICT and softskills in English which they could utilise for remlpoyment. We aim to touch 4 million SMBs in nect three yeras," he added.
Mirosoft has 10,000 channel partners for retail business and has associations with independent software vendors for IT support services across India.
