Sanjay Parthasarathy, a former Microsoft chief who’s among the many notable tech execs which have possession stakes in Seattle’s new skilled cricket group, has been passionate concerning the sport since he performed it as a child in India.
He might find yourself being often known as a key determine in making the second-most well-liked sport on the earth a success within the U.S., too.
Because the Seattle Orcas open their third season of Main League Cricket play on Saturday, Parthasarathy joined a brand new episode of “Desi Roots & Routes,” a podcast produced by Seattle College’s Roundglass India Heart, to speak about all the things from his historical past with the game and how you can play it, to how he hopes it may possibly catch on in America.
The episode touches on parallels between the rise of Indian know-how staff and immigration reform within the U.S., in addition to Parthasarathy’s function in serving to Microsoft take off in India.
Creator and journalist Greg Shaw, who has written about cricket and the Orcas, mentioned that when immigration opened up within the Nineties with the H-1B visa, and the private pc was taking off, Silicon Valley and Seattle noticed an inflow of Indian builders and programmers at locations like Microsoft and elsewhere.
“With them got here their ardour and love for cricket,” Shaw mentioned on the podcast.
Shaw is bullish that Parthasarathy may also help spur cricket’s reputation within the U.S.
“What Sanjay has all the time been so nice at is, at Microsoft, taking difficult software program improvement and making it accessible to the lots,” Shaw mentioned. “And I feel he’s going to do this with Seattle Orcas and with Main League Cricket.”
Parthasarathy is a part of the deep tech community backing that has helped get the Orcas off the bottom. Different notable homeowners embrace: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella; Madrona Enterprise Group Managing Director S. Soma Somasegar; Icertis co-founder and CEO Samir Bodas; and GreatPoint Ventures managing associate Ashok Krishnamurthi.
Parthasarathy, who was previously profiled by GeekWire, spent 19 years at Microsoft. 5 years after becoming a member of the corporate, he advised his managers in 1995 that he wished to go to India and assist Microsoft scale. The concept was born out of his return to the nation six years earlier, throughout a summer time away from MIT, and his understanding that India was poised to make a mark within the IT business.
With no expertise promoting something in his life, he mentioned he was given the OK and was named Microsoft’s regional director for South Asia.
Two years later, Microsoft co-founder Invoice Gates made his first journey to India.
“His journey was greater than Michael Jackson,” Parthasarathy mentioned. “We did 40 totally different conferences, and we coined the phrase ‘India generally is a software program superpower.’ It caught everyone’s creativeness in India. Three years after that was the Y2K problem, which actually was the start of the growth of the Indian software program business. It already existed, we simply occurred to have lit a match on the proper time.”
The Seattle Orcas open the 2025 season on Saturday in a match towards the Washington Freedom in Oakland, Calif., persevering with alongside 5 different groups on the journey to develop the game within the U.S. Be taught extra about watch parties within the Seattle space.
Take heed to the “Desi Roots & Routes” episode under:
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