Nadella was born in Hyderabad of present-day Telangana, India. into a Telugu-language speaking Brahmin Hindu family. His mother Prabhavati was a Sanskrit lecture. and his father, Bukkapuram Nadella Yugandhar, was an Indian Administrative Service officer of the 1962 batch. Satya’s father migrated from Nadella village to Bukkapuram in Anantapuramu district, Andhra Pradesh, and then to Hyderabad.

Nadella attended the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet. before receiving a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka in 1988. Nadella then traveled to the U.S. to study for an M.S. in computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, receiving his degree in 1990. Later, he received an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 1996.

Nadella said, “I always knew I wanted to build things.”