Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella once dreamt of playing a sport in India and becoming a banker. However, some early setbacks pushed him toward becoming one of Silicon Valley's most influential CEOs.
A Middle-Class Childhood Shaped By Values, Not Pedigree
Born into a middle-class family in India, Nadella grew up surrounded by strong intellectual influences.
His father, Bukkapuram Nadella Yugandhar, worked for the Indian government, while his mother, Prabhavati, was a Sanskrit scholar.
In a conversation with LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky in 2023, Nadella said his parents gave him a lot of room and confidence to explore his interests, even if they didn't always agree with each other.
Due to his father’s job, which required them to move frequently, Nadella attended several schools across India before settling at Hyderabad Public School. This helped him adapt to new environments early in life.
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Cricket Dreams, Banking Plans And A Missed IIT Opportunity
As a teenager, Nadella's ambitions had little to do with software. He wanted to play cricket for Hyderabad and imagined a future in banking.
“I was mostly focused on playing cricket. I was not great academically, growing up middle class in India, that sort of sometimes is challenging,” he told Roslansky.
His introduction to personal computers slowly shifted his thinking, but he did not secure admission to the Indian Institute of Technology, widely viewed as the gold standard for engineering education in India.
In a 2020 interview with Reader's Digest, Nadella described IIT as "the holy grail" for middle-class students.
From Manipal To Milwaukee: An Immigrant Leap
Instead, Nadella studied electrical engineering at Manipal Institute of Technology before earning a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He has joked that he could not have located Milwaukee on a map before arriving in the U.S. on his 21st birthday.
Adjusting to a new country, colder weather and homesickness, Nadella began his career at Sun Microsystems before joining Microsoft in 1992, where he also completed a part-time MBA at the University of Chicago.
“But it wasn’t that simple … Only in America would someone like me get the chance to prove himself rather than be typecast based on the school I attended,” he told the outlet.
How Satya Nadella Transformed Microsoft
Nadella became Microsoft's third CEO on Feb. 4, 2014, taking over as the company struggled to keep pace with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN).
Nadella was named CEO, replacing Steve Ballmer, at a time when Microsoft shares were trading at an adjusted close of $30.16 on Feb. 4.
A hypothetical $1,000 investment made at the stock's daily high that day would have purchased 33.1564 shares, which would now be worth $15786.425 today at Microsoft's current share price of $476.12.
Microsoft currently has a market cap of $3.54 trillion.
Benzinga Edge stock rankings indicate that Microsoft holds a positive long-term outlook, while its short and medium-term performance trends remain negative, with additional performance metrics available through the platform.
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