Microsoft has announced key appointments and elevations across India and South Asia, reinforcing its commitment to making India AI-first. These appointments come at a critical time in Microsoft’s 50-year history, India’s AI journey and the company’s role in putting AI in the hands of everyone.
The company has appointed Himani Agrawal as Chief Operating Officer (COO); Nitin Mittal as the Industry Leader, Digital Natives, India & South Asia; and Aparna Kondaboina as Head – Human Resources.
Commenting on the announcements, Puneet Chandok, President, Microsoft India & South Asia, said, “Nitin’s extensive experience in building digital platforms will be invaluable as we continue to innovate and expand our digital native initiatives. I am also particularly proud of our seasoned women leaders taking up the strategic roles to deliver exceptional value to our customers and partners. I welcome Nitin, Himani and Aparna in their new roles and look forward to working with them in being bold and being right as we take the benefits of Microsoft’s AI to every sector, organization, and user across India.”
Nitin Mittal, a seasoned technology leader with over 24 years of experience, brings a strong track record of building digital platforms across sectors including finance, retail, e-commerce, and media. He has held leadership roles at Zee Entertainment, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), and was the founder of SOLV, a B2B platform for SMEs.
Himani Agrawal as the Chief Operating Officer will be responsible for driving revenue growth by aligning business goals across the organization, focusing on strategic innovation, business simplification and overall operations for the company in the region. With over 25 years of experience, Himani has held various leadership roles in the organization – the most recent one being Chief Partner Officer in the country where she strengthened Microsoft’s 20,000+ partner network across 850 Indian cities to scale AI and cloud adoption across industries.
Prior to this, she held key roles like Chief of Staff, Country Head for Azure and Business Applications building high-impact teams and driving scale.
Aparna Kondaboina has held various leadership roles at Microsoft in India and USA. As an HR leader, she is adept at transforming organizations, driving culture change, building effective leadership capability. In her previous role as the HR leader for the Microsoft India Development Centre (IDC), she achieved outstanding results in HR and talent strategy.
In her new role, Aparna will lead the HR strategy to improve talent and culture outcomes within the commercial business division. This position involves promoting inclusion, accountability, and fostering high-performance teams. Her leadership is expected to drive meaningful transformation, drawing on her deep expertise and vision to elevate both people and performance across the region.