The HCL founder, who made it big by pre-empting digital changes, has put in place strong organisational structures to shoulder both his multi-billion dollar company and philanthropy
The litmus test for Nayar came when one of the co-founders, who headed technology, fell seriously ill and had to be replaced. “No one expected me to pick Vineet,” who had never been overseas, never sold overseas and had never been involved in technology areas. He was from the HCL Comnet unit.
“I told him, ‘I’ve chosen you, I’ve been telling you well before, you never believed me but here it is, get started.’ He said, ‘Are you sure?’ I told him, ‘I’m sure, trust my judgement, you’re good.’ He became a fantastic leader taking the whole company higher.”
Nayar was made president of HCL Technologies in 2005 and served as its CEO from 2007 to 2013. He made mantras like ‘employee first’ famous at HCL Technologies and committed the company to chasing ‘Blue Ocean’ strategies of finding large, untapped opportunities and dominating them.
“Shiv has been successful in riding successive waves and re-creating himself and his companies. HCL started as a hardware company with its own proprietary hardware; it transformed itself into a personal computer company,” says Rishikesha Krishnan, a professor of corporate strategy at IIM Bangalore. “Later Shiv successfully shifted gear to software, and in that has been successful in keeping up with the times.”
Nadar is also one of India’s biggest philanthropists. By 2018, he had committed about $800 million of his personal wealth to philanthropy via the Shiv Nadar Foundation and the HCL Foundation.
(This story appears in the 06 December, 2019 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)