San Jose:
At the "Digital India" dinner where Prime Minister Narendra Modi met top CEOs of Silicon Valley, Microsoft's Satya Nadella shared what he called a "haunting image" from his childhood in Andhra Pradesh to illustrate how digital India can change lives.
"I saw two lean people who lay in overturned charpoys with two transistor radios. They were schoolteachers who decided to give up teaching. I think about those people and what they could have achieved today," said the Microsoft CEO.
From that day in his hometown Srikakulam in 1970, India had come a long way, he said.
He began his short remarks with a more positive anecdote on India's transformation, involving a visit to Kenya in June.
"I visited a rural school that day and I went to one of the classrooms...The students were engaged in a skype classroom session with another school. To my very pleasant surprise, this other school happened to be in rural India," he said.
Mr Nadella said next week, Microsoft would announce cloud services from Indian data centres as a key part of both Make in India and Digital India - PM Modi's pet projects.
Outlining more plans for India, Mr Nadella also announced Microsoft's plans to take technology to 500,000 villages.
"We believe low cost broadband connectivity coupled with the scale of cloud computing and the intelligence that can be harnessed from data can help drive creativity, efficiency and productivity across governments and businesses of all size," he said.
Mr Nadella was among 350 CEOs who met PM Modi during his two-day trip the Silicon Valley, the first ever by any Indian prime minister.