It's celebration time at HPS

Reminiscing the past, his batch mates said that Satya Nadella was friendly and affable. His teachers said that he was a different student back then. Though he wasn’t the topper, he used to be in the top 10. Teachers recalled Satya’s inquisitiveness and shared that he used to ask many questions in the class. Batch mates shared that he excelled at debating and played cricket for the school team.

Srikar Reddy, a class 9 student of the HPS and grandson of AP horticulture minister R Venkat Reddy, said he was proud to be in the same school where Nadella studied.

"I did not know before who Satya Nadella was. But when I came to know that he studied in my school and went on to become the CEO of Microsoft, I was excited", said Reddy.

Nadella, a Beatles fan:

Music teacher

Satya Nadella, the new boss of USD 78-billion Microsoft, never missed his music classes in school and loved Western songs, particularly those of the Beatles, says his music teacher.

According to Dennis Powell, the music teacher at Hyderabad Public School-Begumpet, Nadella was interested in learning new songs rather than playing instruments.

"We have music as community singing and Satya used to attend my classes. He was very quiet and nonchalant boy, that's what I remember."

"I am here for 35 years now. I was just three years old in the school when Satya was studying. He liked Western music a lot. Particularly he used to like Rock music. He used to like Beatles a lot. He also used to like listening to music," Powell told PTI, recollecting the old days. He said he came back in touch with Nadella after nearly 30 years when his student sent him a request for friendship through Facebook.

"Two years ago when he came to the school he came up to me and offered thanks for accepting his Facebook friend request," Powel added.

A cricket enthusiast, Hyderabad-born Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992, previously served as the Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise Group.

Principal of Hyderabad Public School-Begumpet Col (retd) R S Khatri said Nadella was instrumental in starting Microsoft's iSpark robotics programme at the school in 2011.

G Jayanand Satya, who taught biology and was also in- charge of the school's NCC wing from 1951 to 1991, said the new Microsoft CEO used to sit in the front bench during the class and participated in horse riding which was part of NCC.

"He was very bright. I remember he used to sit in the front row.

He was also in NCC because those days it was compulsory," Jayanand said.

The school organised a special assembly in the morning to announce the former student's achievement. Some of Nadella's batchmates attended the function.

Nadella becomes a rage in cyber world

Hyderabad born Satya Nadella, swept the cyber world on Wednesday with nearly half-a-billion search results on him. Social networking sites were abuzz with news of him being named as the Microsoft CEO.

At the time of writing this article, the name 'Satya Nadella' in Google search box, produced over 470 million results in half a second. Google news propped up 11.7 million news articles featuring the 46-year-old in just 0.16 seconds. Right now, it appears he is only third after the US President Barack Obama (650 million results) and Bill Gates (about 480 million), in the virtual world.

While Indian business icon Ratan Tata fetched nearly 4 million results, Indian-American Indra Nooyi, chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo, had less than 1 million search results on Google.

Col RS Khatri, principal, Hyderabad Public School, said that he had mentioned, in his speech during the old students' reunion in 2011 in which Nadella was also present, that Google produced 1.14 lakh entries in just 0.13 seconds when Satya Nadella's name was searched.

"Reacting to my remarks, Nadella had said that he would tell his people at Bing (microsoft search engine) that they should do it a shade better," Khatri said.

A page opened on Wednesday afternoon in the name of Nadella on Facebook saw over 50,000 likes in the afternoon and was flooded with wishes for his role as CEO.

In a reply to Sreeramulu Alapati, his classmate from MIT Manipal, Nadella answered: "I marvel every day at how people can excel - and that's what really gets me going."

Microsoft's official blog stated on Tuesday morning, the Studio D building at Microsoft was chock-a-block as hundreds of Microsoft employees gathered around a small stage and craned their necks over three floors of balconies and stairwells, raising voices and clapping hands to welcome the company's third CEO, Satya Nadella

As Satya basked in glory, his parents in the city remained out of bounds for enthusiastic neighbours and well- wishers who wanted to greet them in person and sought to shy away from limelight.

Despite repeated requests for comments on his son's achievement, BN Yugandhar, refused to speak to media persons and conveyed a message saying that their privacy needed to be respected.