Prize in Indian talent search: A year on Bill Gates' team

By New York Times Staff
The New York Times

Published: December 10, 2005, 5:56 AM PST

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BANGALORE, India--Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, announced a contest Friday to identify promising software students in India, offering as top prize an internship with his technical team for a year.

The contest comes amid another in India: the race between low-cost, open-source software and proprietary software, like Microsoft's Windows. The open-source movement, which promotes the Linux operating system, is finding increasing favor over proprietary systems among users and software developers in India.

Addressing 5,000 developers gathered at the Palace Grounds here Friday, Gates said the nationwide talent hunt, called "Code4Bill," would offer the winner an opportunity to study Microsoft's product development and innovations.

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Gates said the contest would show the high quality of work being done in India. "Some of the best commercial work is happening right here," he said to cheers from the gathered crowd.

Gates is something of a celebrity in India, where technology outsourcing has provided well-paid jobs and changed the fortunes of thousands of middle-class Indians. But companies like Microsoft worry that many developers are joining the open-source movement.

Since Gates last visited India in 2002, Linux has found increasing favor not just among local governments like those in neighboring Maharashtra state, but also at the National Stock Exchange in Mumbai and at Hindustan Lever, the country's biggest consumer products company, also based in Mumbai. India, with its one billion people, is a potentially huge market, but it needs inexpensive computers and software.

Supporters of open-source software say Microsoft has made large donations of its software to Indian government offices to "hook" them on its products. But at the Palace Grounds, most of the young developers gathered to see Gates were clearly in awe of him.

"I want to be like him. I am a huge admirer," said 24-year old Naveen Rao, a development engineer with the outsourcing company Aditi Technologies.

On his current visit, Gates has left no doubt of India's importance in Microsoft's business plans. He announced a $1.7 billion investment in India over the next four years. About half of that would go to Microsoft's research and development center in Hyderabad in southern India, its biggest outside its headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

The investment will also help intensify Microsoft's research to create low-cost computing systems.

The Code4Bill contest will begin in January and last eight months. Twenty finalists will receive internships with Microsoft India before a final winner is selected to join Gates' own team.

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