The Microsoft VP’s memory of growth in India makes an unexpected case for what matters in the age of AI

One of Ravi Vedula’s strongest memories from childhood is seeing his name in the The Deccan Chronicle. He and his friends at a government housing center in Hyderabad, India, solved the Sunday Jumble puzzle in the newspaper every week, sending postcards with their answers, and he was finally chosen as the winner.

The prize was 25 rupees. They used the money to buy a set of cricket wickets, a precious shared asset that the children had little of and came together to make the most of it.

Vedula is now a business vice president at Microsoft, a 25-year veteran of the company, who leads the data and information organization behind Microsoft 365 and Copilot as a software giant and the entire tech world is charging the entire fast world of AI.

His new book, “Hyderabad Days: The code we lived by before we coded it,” is filled with vignettes from a different place and time. But the lessons for humanity are more important than ever.

“This book is not from the past,” said Vedula over coffee in Seattle on Friday afternoon. “It’s about the value system that we carry forward into the future.”

Writing is remembering

Vedula leads IDEAS (Insights, Data Engineering, Analytics, and Systems) Microsoft’s organization that manages data and analytics across Experiences and Devices, including Microsoft 365, Copilot, Office, Windows, and Microsoft security systems. Prior to that, he was the first engineering manager for Microsoft Exchange Online.

He is also a heart transplant recipient. He had been living with heart disease since 2001, without telling anyone at work. In 2015, he was in the hospital, and used a heart machine for 18 months while waiting for a donor. He received a transplant in January 2017.

Vedula wrote much of what would become “Hyderabad Days” on medical leave. He was not working in the book at the time. He was taking everything down, unsure of his future.

The book is full of scenes from colonial life. On Sunday morning, three generations of his family crowded around the TV set to watch the Mahabharata, a mythological show that was popular across India in the late 1980s. He and his friends played cricket with a ball bought from everyone’s pocket change. His mother cooked for a house full of family and guests and never sat down to eat with them, scraping her food together from what was left in the pan.

Each chapter is followed by a written text that connects the memory to a lesson about leadership, engineering, or life. The device is inspired by “The Wonder Years,” a TV show where an adult narrator covers each episode by thinking about the meaning of children’s events.

In another post, Vedula recalls how a fisherman cut an undersea cable and brought down Microsoft’s Dublin data center while running Exchange Online. Everyone panicked. He thought of Parimal, his colonial cricket captain, who never lost his cool. He wasn’t the best player on the team, but he kept everyone on track when things got tough.

“My education in computer science did not prepare me for this time,” Vedula said last week. “Did I miss a class about fishing trailers?”

He told himself that he didn’t need to know everything. He needed to be level-headed and help his team through the process, as Parimal always did on the cricket field.

Disclosure of AI

A note in the introduction says “the narrative has been shaped with the help of AI,” which at first made me question which episodes belonged to Vedula and which didn’t as I read, wondering if some parts seemed too polished. But in our conversation on the side porch of a Fremont coffee shop, I quickly realized that Vedula’s voice in person matched the book.

He explained that he used Microsoft 365 Copilot primarily for proofreading and formatting, and as what he called a “thought partner,” checking each chapter for weaknesses.

At one point, AI helped him come up with an analogy for making pesarattu, a traditional Hyderabadi breakfast dish, that related to Western students about the memories and feelings it evoked. The suggestion was pancakes and eggs, and after using comparisons with a few people to make sure, he went with it.

He hired proofreaders, one in the US and one in India, and worked with Greg Shaw, editor of 8080 Books, who co-authored Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s “Hit Refresh.”

But the stories and words are clearly Vedula’s from beginning to end.

“I was very determined that my word was kept,” he confirmed.

The revelation of the foreword, and my reaction to it as a reader, raised a question that should be considered as AI-assisted writing becomes more common: can well-intentioned acknowledgments undermine the perception of the work more than the use of AI guarantees?

Colony boys

During our conversation, Vedula took out a photo from his bag, which was taken more than 40 years ago in the colony, and pointed to the boys. One is now the chief executive of Barry Callebaut chocolates, formerly of Coca-Cola. Another is the vice president at Rivian. One runs a company in India. Another anesthesiologist.

They were all reading a book. In their WhatsApp group, they argued about why Vedula left out certain stories, and why she pretended to be the only one who likes a certain Bollywood actor, just like they might have argued about hitting when they were kids on the field.

“In a way, we grew up with nothing,” said Vedula. “But really it was everything.”

“Hyderabad Days: The code we lived before we wrote it,” by Ravi Vedula, published by Microsoft’s 8080 Books, is out March 31. is available for pre-order now.