Satya Nadella, the Indian-born Microsoft CEO that has taken the tech company to new heights,?has added another feather to his cap.
Nadella has been named Fortune's Business Person of the Year 2019 -- a list that includes 20 business icons who have broken the norms to stand out of the crowd.
Reuters
Fortune commends Satya's dedication and execution at Microsoft. He's neither a founder like Bill Gates nor a big-personality sales leader like predecessor Steve Ballmer, but it's his sheer hard work that brought him to the CEO's chair in 2014.
Fortune also mentions how Satya never worked in finance -- which has known to be a crucial training ground for most of the CEOs and how he fought along the cut-throat competition within Microsoft since his joining in the year 1992.
Fortune quotes Satya, "I am wired to be fairly confident in myself and to let others shine. CEOs can only do what they do if they have an amazing team. I am blessed to have that."
The success for Microsoft has to be after it focused more on cloud services, under Nadella's leadership. Other elements contributing to this success were LinkedIn sessions, revenue from commercial cloud services, and of course Windows 10 devices.?
When Satya Nadella first took over as Microsoft's CEO in February 2014, the company was not in a good position. Their smartphone business couldn't compete with Android and iOS, Windows 8 was innovative but incomplete, and consumers weren't happy.
Reuters
When he finally came onboard, he made some noteworthy overhauls to what his predecessor Steve Ballmer had set in motion. Microsoft's Azure cloud platform itself was a gamble when it was set up.?
Nadella took that one step further. He made the controversial decision to allow open-source competitor Linux, which Ballmer had once called "cancer", to operate on Azure. Since then, the platform has shown considerable growth. And now it is one of the most revenue-generating product at Microsoft.?
Satya Nadella wasn't the only Indian on Fortune's list. MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga (8th spot) and Arista head Jayshree Ullal (18th spot) were also among the top 20 Businessperson of the year 2019.