Microsoft India opens new Garage location in Hyderabad

Microsoft India today formally opened a new Microsoft Garage locations at its India Development Center in Hyderabad. Like Microsoft's other Garage spaces, the Hyderabad location will be a place for employees to work on new ideas and experimental projects.

According to Microsoft, the Hyderabad Garage measures up at 8000 square feet and includes three major sections: Hub, Makerspace, and Reality Room. The Hub will serve as a dedicated spot for hackathons and workshops, while the Makerspace includes 3D printers, a laser cutter, and a PCB milling machine for making prototypes. Meanwhile, the Reality Room is a space where employees can work on AR and VR mixed reality applications and more.

"The Garage enables employees to bring to life innovative ideas and solutions. The Garage program in India will be a connector to bring together people across roles, skills, and experience to lend their passion to create solutions unique to this market." said Anil Bhansali, Corporate Vice President, Cloud & Enterprise, Managing Director, Microsoft India (R&D) Private Limited.

Microsoft Garage has spawned a number of interesting projects over the years, some of which have grown into full-fledged products or had features folded into other Microsoft applications. Notably, Arrow Launcher, an Android launcher which eventually evolved into Microsoft Launcher, started off as a Garage project. Other notable projects to come out of Garage include Seeing AI, and a dictation add-in for Office -- a feature which has since been baked into the Office lineup.

The Hyderabad Garage location is among three, including one in China and one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that Microsoft announced in 2017.