Anil Bhansali's Journey as Microsoft India Managing Director: Volume I: Journeys, #1

By Tali J Lingam

This is Volume I in the book collection about Anil Bhansali. This book traces the journey of Anil Bhansali as Microsoft India Managing Director and should be an eye-opener to everyone to understand what goes inside the glorified facade of one of the most famous offices in India and arguably the world.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lawmark Press
• Release date: Jan 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224698592

Tali J Lingam

Tali J Lingam works for betterment in Legal Compliance and Ethics.

Book preview

Preface

What will you do if you knew no one was watching you?

This question is a measure of someone’s internal moral compass and ethics of how someone behaves in the shadow.

If a person behaves in the same manner both in presence of others or cameras when the world is watching them and in the presence of their close trusted circle, then they are ethically strong and morally right.

Otherwise, they are ethically weak and morally wrong.

The subject of this book, Anil Bhansali, Microsoft India Managing Director falls in the second category.

That someone with this behavior has been put in such a significant position and remains unscathed is a major cause of worry for all of us.

This book traces the journey of Anil Bhansali as Microsoft India Managing Director and should be an eye-opener to everyone.

Origins and Education

Anil Bhansali is a Hindu belonging to the Bhanushali community. This community primarily hails from Kutch district and Jamnagar regions of Gujarat State located in West India.

Bhanushalis served as soldiers when the areas were ruled by kings. But with time, the community decided to branch out into business and trade expanding their presence in the old Bombay state (Gujarat and the metropolitan city of Mumbai) and also Rajasthan.

This helped the community develop wealth and build a network due to their involvement in maritime trade.

Insiders at Microsoft claim Anil Bhansali has his roots in Rajasthan state of Western India and took interest to give keynote address at IIT located in this state during Microsoft’s code.fun.do program for this reason.

Wealthy Indians had a habit of sending their sons to United States and United Kingdom for their undergraduate studies. Having gained wealth, Anil’s parents felt it appropriate to send their son to United States and hence Anil Bhansali did his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Stony Brook University located in New York state in Eastern United States.

Career

Anil Bhansali’s early career was in USA being hired by Microsoft. He is said to have to worked on Microsoft Excel when Floppy and CDs were still being used to install software. After receiving Green Card (USA Citizenship), he is said to have returned to India.

Pic: Anil Bhansali in his Hyderabad office with background showing various software he worked on.

Anil Bhansali frequently boasts that he was the man who made Microsoft successful and shows off wall in his office with photos of various software of Microsoft like Excel, Office, Word, SharePoint, etc., which he says were his ideas.

Anil also boasts that he is senior to present Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella having joined Microsoft before Nadella did and also that he is better educated than CEO Satya Nadella as his university is better ranked than the ones Nadella studied in. He claims before of this, Nadella keeps Anil’s opinions in high regard and will do whatever he asks him to do.

He relocated to India and took up job at Microsoft Hyderabad after his requests for promotion and more money were turned down if he stayed put at the Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond. He was informed he will get more promotions and receive higher salary packages if he returned to India.

In return, Anil promised to be a loyalist to Microsoft Headquarters and asked that he become the adopted son of the CEO of Microsoft so he will receive protection from any misdeeds and wrong doings he does in Microsoft India similar to how he received protection from severe misdeeds and wrong doings in Microsoft USA.

With assurance received from the top heavyweights at Microsoft to cover up his errors of judgement, Anil Bhansali came to India with happy smile as he was assured he will made king of Microsoft India in sometime.

Bonding with new CEO Satya Nadella

During Satya Nadella’s visits to India prior to him becoming CEO of the company, Anil built a rapport with Satya.

Satya in 2012-2013 as President of his division visited Hyderabad and inaugurated an open office section on third floor of Building 3 titled Studio which was colourfully designed and made with intention to enhance collaboration.

This Studio space was meant for designers to stimulate their creativity and featured such comforts like standing desks which were not common in rest of Microsoft with the trade-off being that privacy was lost.

Because of his bonding with Satya Nadella, he influenced RE&F (Real Estate & Facilities) division to allocate an office space with the best views as he had the Microsoft’s Lake as one wall of his office and Microsoft’s standing rock garden and bus bay on the other side as another wall of his office.

Microsoft also pandered to his wishes and allowed him to have a standing desk at his office and allowed the company to spend tens of thousands of dollars to take a few select loyalist of Anil to a resort very far away just to celebrate completion of Anil Bhansali’s 25 years in Microsoft wasting precious resources of the company and stopping the entire work/productivity of others that day to satisfy Anil’s vanity.

Like Satya Nadella, Anil also spends 30 minutes daily in running on his treadmill and has many a time given higher preference to spending even office time on running and fitness activities not just for himself but for others.

Pics: Microsoft employees while away time in conference rooms and elsewhere on the office campus during work hours

Neglecting important events

Unless the event helps in driving Anil’s agenda, he absconds from the event even if it is held inside the same building he works in at Microsoft: Building 3.

The big embarrassment for CEO Satya Nadella happened during his visit to Hyderabad office Building 3.

Pic: Satya Nadella at Hyderabad office Building 3

To introduce Satya Nadella to the crowd, a senior business person was called all the way from 2000 kilometres away.

Pic: Satya Nadella was introduced during the event by Anant Maheswari (in background in lavender shirt)

Anil Bhansali reportedly apologized in private for not playing an active role during Satya Nadella’s visit claiming he was not well.

He did not amend ways even during the visits of senior leaders from Microsoft headquarters like Derick Connell who were promoting the then hyped-up idea of having a digital twin for everyone in the form of a Skype bot. Anil did not participate in this event.

Pic: Derick Connell from Microsoft Redmond proposed having a digital twin for everyone in the form of a Skype bot

Ignoring the new hire programs

Every company goes out of the way to make new joiners in the company feel important, by involving the heads of the regional office in giving atleast a welcome address.

But strangely Anil Bhansali completely ignores this, leaving the efforts in the hands of some disinterested HR person in Microsoft to do the needful just by going through the basic motions.

The situation becomes even more embarrassing when a female staff member, Debjani Mukerji who is based in a different city altogether, Bengaluru, has to travel very frequently to the company’s Hyderabad office and live out of suitcases and hotel rooms for most of the week leaving her husband and daughter to manage the home and adding avoidable stress to her, solely because Anil Bhansali who is situated in the same office as the conference rooms where these programs are held does not care about the value of new joiners.

As Anil cares only about how someone can help him in personal growth and higher rewards, he does not care about team wide activities that a person in responsible position like the one he has should be doing.

Pic: Hackathon awards for new engineer/scientist joiners at Microsoft India

Bumbling Fool Unmasked

In interviews, Anil Bhansali is incomprehensible. He speaks in a hurried manner where his voice is hardly audible and has little to no impact on the audience. He eats into his own words and gives the reader the impression that he is a bumbling fool.

You wouldn’t worry or think twice about a bumbling fool. He speaks and vanishes and no one cares because he doesn’t matter right?

No, those who know about the inner workings of Anil Bhansali disagree with this description of bumbling fool. They feel it is a constructed persona because why would a big tech companies like Microsoft put a bumbling fool as head of one of its largest offices in the world!

This persona allows Anil Bhansali to get away with many of his sinister actions done behind the curtains and ensures that he does not draw any attention to himself inspite of being in big posts.

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Pic: Anil Bhansali during a typical interview. Notice the body language displayed is of a bumbling fool which is tailored to evoke sympathy from gullible readers

Underpaying staff

Microsoft India has had a poor reputation regarding the salaries