IIT-Madras alumnus Pavan Davuluri named head of Microsoft Windows, Surface

Pavan Davuluri, an IIT-Madras alumnus, has been named the new head of Microsoft Windows and Surface after long-time product chief Panos Panay quit and joined Amazon last year.

Davluluri is the latest Indian to take on a leadership role at a Big Tech company – like Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella. Davuluri, who has worked for 23 long years with Microsoft, earlier oversaw the Surface group while Mikhail Parakhin headed the Windows department.

Two departments

After Parakhin and Panay quit, Davuluri took over both the Windows and Surface departments.

An internal memo from Rajesh Jha, Microsoft's head of experiences and devices, said the decision will help the organisation to take a "holistic approach" to build its devices and experiences in the AI era.

"As part of this change, we are bringing together the Windows Experiences and Windows + Devices teams as a core part of the Experiences + Devices (E+D) division,” the memo said.

Holistic stand

“This will enable us to take a holistic approach to building silicon, systems, experiences, and devices that span Windows client and cloud for this AI era,” it added.

While Davuluri will continue to report to Jha, Shilpa Ranganathan and Jeff Johnson and their teams will report directly to Pavan.

“The Windows team will continue to work closely with the Microsoft AI team on AI, silicon, and experiences," Jha said.

Microsoft reorganisation

Davuluri was earlier involved in Microsoft work with Qualcomm and AMD to create processors for Surface.

The reorganisation announcement comes days after Google DeepMind co-founder and former Inflection AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman joined Microsoft as the CEO of its new AI team.