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Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday (December 11) said India is on track to become the world’s largest developer community on GitHub by the end of the decade, citing the scale and quality of contributions emerging from the country.
Speaking at the 'Building India’s AI Frontier' keynote in Bengaluru, Nadella said, "India is slated to become the number one community in the world with GitHub by 2030," praising the "engagement and the type of projects that are coming out of this place, the contributions from India."
Nadella used the platform to highlight how AI is transforming software creation and why developers must rethink their approach to building products. He said the software industry is entering a phase where traditional development models are no longer sufficient.
"We're not building for building's sake. We're building to have impact," he said, adding that technology’s value lies in how quickly it helps organisations innovate and achieve measurable results.
He outlined what he called a core inversion in the software development life cycle (SDLC). Instead of starting with specifications, developers in the AI era must begin with evaluation. "You start with the test, not the spec," Nadella said, urging teams to first define the real-world outcome they want to influence — including the task, metrics and evaluation framework — and then design the workflow backward.
Nadella also highlighted "context engineering", which builds on data engineering but focuses on structuring information so AI systems receive the right context to deliver reliable outputs. Calling the transition "critical", he said the industry needs "a new way to think about the frontier of the classic SDLC" and that "a shift to an AI-driven SDLC is going to be essential."
Nadella’s comments come alongside Microsoft’s recently announced $17.5 billion investment in India over the next four years to expand AI and cloud infrastructure — its largest-ever investment in Asia.
Speaking at the 'Building India’s AI Frontier' keynote in Bengaluru, Nadella said, "India is slated to become the number one community in the world with GitHub by 2030," praising the "engagement and the type of projects that are coming out of this place, the contributions from India."
Nadella used the platform to highlight how AI is transforming software creation and why developers must rethink their approach to building products. He said the software industry is entering a phase where traditional development models are no longer sufficient.
"We're not building for building's sake. We're building to have impact," he said, adding that technology’s value lies in how quickly it helps organisations innovate and achieve measurable results.
He outlined what he called a core inversion in the software development life cycle (SDLC). Instead of starting with specifications, developers in the AI era must begin with evaluation. "You start with the test, not the spec," Nadella said, urging teams to first define the real-world outcome they want to influence — including the task, metrics and evaluation framework — and then design the workflow backward.
Nadella also highlighted "context engineering", which builds on data engineering but focuses on structuring information so AI systems receive the right context to deliver reliable outputs. Calling the transition "critical", he said the industry needs "a new way to think about the frontier of the classic SDLC" and that "a shift to an AI-driven SDLC is going to be essential."
Nadella’s comments come alongside Microsoft’s recently announced $17.5 billion investment in India over the next four years to expand AI and cloud infrastructure — its largest-ever investment in Asia.
