Daybreak - Why Microsoft India's most successful leader couldn't keep all his employees happy

Episode Date: July 30, 2023

Last month, the global tech giant Microsoft India saw its revenue hit $3 billion, much closer to its $5 billion target by 2025. A Mumbai based sales leader told The Ken that in 2022, Microsoft India grew twice the growth of Microsoft globally.Behind the company's success was Anant Maheshwari who had been leading it for the last seven years. Described as an aggressive salesman and hard taskmaster, while he took the Microsoft India to new heights, his leadership style left a section of employees feeling dejected.What was going on inside the walls of the tech giant?Tune in to find out.RecommendationThe ChatGPT effect: Microsoft gaining momentum in cloud race against Amazon and Google by Pratap Vikram SinghDaybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first video. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. Last month, the global tech giant Microsoft India saw its revenue hit nearly $3 billion. The company's goal though is $5 billion by 2025. But with the pace at which the revenue rose from 2021, which happens to be a two-fold increase, the possibility of Microsoft achieving its target in India seems quite likely. The India team, as you can tell, is doing exceptionally well. Since 2019, Microsoft

India has won four internal awards which are given based on a holistic scorecard. It includes parameters like revenue, adoption level by customers and the range of products sold. A Mumbai-based sales leader told the Ken's Pratap Vikram Singh that in 2022, Microsoft India grew twice the growth of global Microsoft. Now, that is something, isn't it? I'm sure you want to ask who is behind all this success. Of course, there are the tech giants employees, but who has been leading them? His name is Anant Maheshwari. He's been heading Microsoft to India for the last seven years. And you could say, arguably, he's the most successful leader that the company has ever seen. Behind this success is his aggressive salesmanship, which while it took the company to new heights,

also left some sections of its employees a little upset. I'm sure, just like me, sometimes when you read the news about these giant tech companies and you see all these big numbers about growth and revenue and profits and losses, you wonder what's really going on on the inside. But to To get this kind of information is pretty difficult. Companies, especially the big ones, are pretty tight-lipped about internal stuff like this. But sometimes things fall through tiny cracks. And the specific crack that I am referring to is Anandth Maheshwari resigning from the company about three weeks ago. Welcome to the 100th episode of Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nick Da Sharma, and I Don't Chase the News Cycle. Instead, thrice a week on Mondays,

Wednesdays and Fridays, I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 31st of July. When Maheshwari joined Microsoft seven years ago as the head of the sales unit, he came with a lot of rich experience. He had spent more than 12 years at Honeywell India, the US-based conglomerate in aerospace industrial and consumer tech. He began there as early as 2004 as the director of strategy and business. development. And over the years, he rose to the position of president. And after that, he also worked for nearly six years at the management consulting firm McKinsey. At Microsoft, he became a trusted lieutenant of Satya Nadela who had taken the company over as a global CEO in 2014. At the time,

Nadela was working towards transitioning Microsoft from a traditional technology license subscription seller to a formidable force in the cloud computing business. Maheshwari carried out the changes at the India unit in line with Nadela's vision. Many of Maheshwari's colleagues describe him as an ambitious and tough taskmaster with a low tolerance for incompetence. At least five executives who worked closely with him said that his mantra was My Way or the highway. A senior executive who quit the company this year told the Ken,

and I'm quoting, he is known more for his high IQ than EQ. He did not have many friends in the organisation. End quote. But there are also others who are loyal and who defend him staunchly. A senior leader said that Maheshwari was a thousand percent committed to his job and he expected the same from others. How else would he have pushed the company to around $3 billion in revenues? Stay tuned to find out.

Before Maheshwari took over, start-ups and unicorns as customers were not a priority for Microsoft. The company only had an accelerator program for new economy startups. Pratab spoke to executives from Microsoft India as well as its rivals, and they told him what changed the company's growth trajectory. It was Maheshwari's focus on venture capital-funded startups and large conglomerates, which are the two top buyers of cloud services. In fact, VC-funded startup,

are actually the biggest buyers. It was Amazon's cloud service growth which was fueled by digital natives that caught Maheshwari's attention. Digital natives are basically startups and companies that use cloud computing instead of buying and maintaining their own computing infrastructure. So Maheshwari built a team focused on the segment.

These targeted efforts led to Microsoft's initial wins like Ola and Flipcott. One of Maheshwari's colleagues told us that the results were so good that the same strategy was picked up later by Microsoft on a global level. Last year, Microsoft also created a separate vertical named DNB or Digital Natives businesses. Overall, Azure, which is the name of Microsoft's cloud business in India, stood at $100 million in 2019. But by 2022, it achieved a $1 billion run rate. There were also big-ticket deals like the geo-azure partnership. In 2019, geo-infacom partnered with Microsoft to provide small and medium businesses in India

access to cloud-based video conferencing and business applications. The deal also involved using the Azure stack across Reliance's data centers. Maheshwari was instrumental in finalizing the technicalities and getting both sides on the same page. Fun fact, when Maheshwari was working at Honeywell, he had developed a good rapper with Manoj Modi, who happens to be the director of Reliance Retail and Geo Infocom. A person close to geo platforms told Pratap that Reliance has used more cloud services than it initially committed. Interestingly, all the video streaming during IPL, the annual cricket tournament, was done using Microsoft's Azure platform. Apart from corporates, Maheshwari also actively engaged with the government.

In March last year, his team and him met Ashwini Weishnav, the Minister for Communications and Information Technology and Railways. The agenda was to pitch how the government can leverage private sector expertise in core digital infrastructure such as data centres, cyber security and emails. Maheshwari's colleagues told again that he used to prepare for hours before these meetings. But all this aggressiveness to push revenues came at a price. Not all his employees were happy. Coming up next, we try to find out why.

To accomplish Microsoft India's revenue growth, Maheshwari worked closely with second-run leaders. Most of them had been with the company for a long time and there were many industry veterans amongst them. But all of them have either left Microsoft or moved to an overseas office. Two company executives told us that some of the veterans were feeling sidelined. Because many of the newly inducted were people in the good books of Maheshwari and some of them had worked at Honeywell or McKinsey earlier.

Many thought that this was not fair. Before Maheshwari's resignation, his trusted ally Navtei Singh Bal, who had also had a long stint at McKinsey, was promoted to chief operating officer. And then Sangita Bavi, the current executive director for digital natives, was Maheshwari's chief of staff between 2017 and 2019. Most of these actions did not sit well with the old-timers at Microsoft, and they fell dejected.

Some of these executives felt that the newly appointed leaders did not have long enough experience in sales to lead the business units. Many people that we spoke to also said that Maheshwari would offer struggle to control his temper. Irrespective of all these things, though, there is no doubt that Maheshwari took Microsoft India closer to its 5 billion revenue goal. But again, growth and a positive work culture do not have to be mutually exclusive goals. Daybreak is produced from the Newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform.

What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings, A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters, subscriber-only apps and podcast extras. Head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website. I am Snigda Sharma, your host, and today's episode was edited by my colleague Rajiv Sien.