Ajit Doval
Ajit Kumar Doval, KC (born 20 January 1945) is the fifth and current National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of India. He previously served as the Director of the Intelligence Bureau in 2004–05, after spending a decade as the head of its operation wing. He is also regarded as an instrumental figure in Revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. He is a retired member of the Indian Police Service.
Doval joined the Indian Police Service in 1968 in the Kerala cadre as the ASP of Kottayam district. He was actively involved in anti-insurgency operations in Kerala and Punjab.
Ajit Doval played a role in intelligence for Sikkim's merger with India. He was trained under M. K. Narayanan, the 3rd National Security Advisor of India for a brief period in counterterrorism operations. He was also part of the team sent to Kandahar to negotiate the release of the passengers of Indian Airlines IC-814.
He served as Additional Director and Special Director of Intelligence Bureau. He was later appointed as Director of the Intelligence Bureau.
On 30 May 2014, Doval was appointed as India's fifth National Security Advisor. In June 2014, Doval played a crucial role in ensuring the secure return of 46 Indian nurses who were trapped in a hospital in Tikrit, Iraq. After family members lost all contact from these nurses, following the capture of Mosul by ISIL. Doval, on a top secret mission flew to Iraq on 25 June 2014 to understand the position on the ground and make high-level contacts in the Iraqi government.
He is widely credited for the doctrinal shift in Indian national security policy in relation to Pakistan, switching from 'Defensive' to 'Defensive Offensive' as well as the 'Double Squeeze Strategy.' It was speculated that the September 2016 Indian strikes in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir were his brainchild.
Doval is widely credited along with then Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and Indian Ambassador to China, Vijay Keshav Gokhale, for resolving Doklam Standoff through diplomatic channels and negotiations.
In 1988, Doval was granted one of the highest gallantry awards, the Kirti Chakra, becoming the first police officer to receive a medal previously given only as a military honour.
Satya Nadella
Satya Narayana Nadella (born 19 August 1967) is an Indian-American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014. Before becoming CEO, he was the executive vice president of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise group, responsible for building and running the company's computing platforms.
Nadella was born in Hyderabad of present-day Telangana, India into a Telugu-speaking Hindu family. His mother Prabhavati was a Sanskrit lecturer and his father, Bukkapuram Nadella Yugandhar, was an Indian Administrative Service officer of the 1962 batch. Satya's father migrated from Nadella village to Bukkapuram in Anantapuramu district, Andhra Pradesh, and then to Hyderabad.
Nadella attended the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet before receiving a bachelor's in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka in 1988. Nadella then traveled to the U.S. to study for an M.S. in computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, receiving his degree in 1990. Later, he received an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 1996.
Nadella worked at Sun Microsystems as a member of its technology staff before joining Microsoft in 1992. At Microsoft, Nadella has led major projects that included the company's move to cloud computing and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world. On 4 February 2014, Nadella was announced as the new CEO of Microsoft, the third CEO in the company's history, following Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
In October 2014, Nadella attended an event on Women in Computing and courted controversy after he made a statement that women should not ask for a raise and should trust the system. Nadella was criticised for the statement and he later apologized on Twitter. He then sent an email to Microsoft employees admitting he was "Completely wrong."
In 2014, Nadella's first acquisition with Microsoft's was of Mojang, a Swedish game company best known for the computer game Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. He followed that by purchasing Xamarin for an undisclosed amount. He oversaw the purchase of professional network LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion. On October 26, 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub for US$7.5 billion. Since Nadella became CEO, Microsoft stock had tripled by September 2018, with a 27% annual growth rate.