A battle in the Clouds is brewing in India for Microsoft’s Satya Nadella

When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella begins his three-day India visit in Mumbai on Monday, he will have his task cut out.

Decades of goodwill and immense brand recognition in the country notwithstanding, Microsoft faces a tough challenge as newer and nimbler rivals expand market share, helping Indian companies migrate their information technology infrastructure and applications to the cloud.

Many of these younger rivals have lower running costs, superior customer service and can adapt to changes at a faster pace, forcing incumbents such as Microsoft to invest heavily to catch up. While globally, Microsoft, along with Amazon Web Services (AWS), dominates the on-demand cloud computing platforms and application programming interface (API) business,