Microsoft India elevates key hands in top-level rejig

There has been a significant top level restructuring at Microsoft India with several key leaders being elevated. ET has learnt that chief operating officer Irina Ghose has been promoted as managing director of India. The current MD Sashi Sreedharan has been elevated to a bigger role. Ghose’s COO position will be taken over by Navtez Bal, who was earlier executive director of public sector while Venkat Krishnan, who was heading partnerships has been elevated as executive director of public sector business.

Microsoft confirmed the elevation of Ghose, Bal and Krishnan

These announcements were formally made by the company a few weeks ago and have come into effect from July 1, the company’s start of the financial year. Some reports have said that AWS India head Puneet Chandok who resigned earlier this year is headed to Microsoft.

Ghose was COO of Microsoft India until recently with the responsibility to drive end-to-end operations for the Microsoft customer and partner solutions in India.

“The company has introduced several changes in the top management effective from July 1, which is the beginning of the financial year for Microsoft,” said the person who did not wish to be identified.

Microsoft is currently the leader in the enterprise cloud front but is also facing fierce competition in India from the likes of Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. With a large number of small and medium businesses increasing their cloud and digital spends since the pandemic, India holds a very strong opportunity.

Microsoft India president Anant Maheshwari, who was appointed the Nasscom chairperson in April, said in a recent interview that the company is accelerating its footprint in India.“In India, you’re still having a lot more green shoots,” he said. Maheshwari called out sectors such as banking and financial services (BFSI) and emerging companies as areas Microsoft continues to find significant traction for its products.

Maheshwari also said that Microsoft has started integrating solutions for its clients in India with generative AI such as ChatGPT. And the company is seeing more applications across industries and sees demand across sectors like BFSI, healthcare among others.

A Microsoft veteran of over two decades, Ghose has held a variety of strategy and sales leadership roles across enterprise, solution sales, partner solutions, and education segments, focusing on business management, operations, partnerships and new business initiatives. In her previous role as the leader of cloud solutions in India, she was focused on empowering cloud transformation.

Ghose’s former COO position will be taken over by Navtez Bal. Bal was previously the executive director for public sector business of Microsoft India which included driving the digital transformation of multiple central ministries, state governments, public sector units and educational institutions. Bal joined Microsoft from McKinsey & Company in 2020.

Bal’s role as executive director of public sector business will be handed to Venkat Krishnan. Krishnan’s last role was as executive director of global partner solutions at Microsoft. He joined Mirosoft from Oracle in 2017.

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