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HYDERABAD: India-born Satya Nadella, the new boss of $ 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.