Nadella woos India Inc. with artificial intelligence

When Binny Bansal, co-founder of India's largest retailer Flipkart was studying at IIT-Delhi, nobody at his institute was interested in the subject of artificial intelligence. "Because nothing was happening in India," Mr. Bansal told his co-panelists Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani during a fireside chat at an event in Bengaluru. That was 15 years ago and a lot has changed since. On Monday, Mr. Nadella, who leads the world's largest software maker, announced a strategic partnership with Flipkart, where the e-commerce company would adopt the company's cloud computing platform, Microsoft Azure. Flipkart said that it planned to leverage artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and analytics capabilities in Azure to optimise its data for innovative merchandising, advertising, marketing and customer service.