End of an era at HCL Tech: Nadar challenged global giants at their own game

Transforming a pure hardware products company into an IT services giant of global standing is no mean feat. Especially, when the entrepreneur had started his journey in the 1970s when India neither had a market for these products nor the funding source to support such bold bets.

“I call entrepreneurs of the 1970s as the gold standard because these fine men have made it big despite all the challenges. Shiv Nadar is one such personality, who could think of global distribution of products at that time,” said Vineet Nayar, former chief executive (CEO) of HCL Technologies and founder chairman of Sampark Foundation. 

As the founder of HCL Tech decided to step down from chairmanship on Friday, passing on the mantle to his daughter Roshni Nadar Malhotra, an era comes to an end. He was the last founder chairman in the Indian IT services industry to step down. Last year, Wipro’s founder Azim Premji had stepped down from the chairman’s role with his son Rishad Premji taking over reins of the company.

An electrical and electronics engineering bachelor, Nadar started his career as management trainee in DCM. He met the co-founders of his first venture in DCM with whom he started HCL in a Delhi Barsati, which can be compared to ‘a garage start-up’ in 1976. Known as Hindustan Computers, the focus area of the firm was ‘microprocessors’. Thinking of creating products from India for the world during ‘licence raj’ was replete with many challenges but none was big enough to break the passion of Nadar.

His strategic decision-making was also evident as he cashed in on the opportunity created after the then Janata Party government asked foreign companies to leave India. There has been no looking back ever since. The company pivoted many times, from selling calculators to computer hardware, networking switches, and eventually entering the technology services market, spinning off HCL Tech as a separate firm in 1991. It went through a few name changes and got the current name in 1999, the year it came out with its initial public offering.

By the beginning of this century, HCL diversified into the IT services space and became the number three player among Indian IT services players. With $9.9 billion of top line, HCL Tech  still has its product DNA intact. It has one of the largest R&D spends among Indian IT players with a big engineering services division. The appetite for product play was in full display when HCL Tech acquired certain IPs from IBM last year at an investment of $1.8 billion.

“He is a very dynamic entrepreneur who has built the HCL group in which HCL Tech is the leader. As a stalwart of the industry, his leadership style was very direct and he was very focused on marketing and sales,” said T V Mohandas Pai, former CFO and board member, Infosys, and chairman of Aarin Capital.

Like every successful entrepreneur, Nadar has the knack of finding talent, nurturing them and giving enough space for innovation. No wonder, from C P Gurnani of Tech Mahindra to Sandeep Kishore of Zensar Technologies, all had honed their skills at HCL before moving up.

As Shiv Nadar passed on the mantle to his daughter Roshni Nadar Malhotra, sources say, she shares the same passion as her father. 

“While there are many entrepreneurs who build to sell, Shiv has always built to last. I think, Roshni shares the same passion. She is very passionate, purposeful and focussed,” said Nayar.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra grew up in Delhi and completed her schooling from Vasant Valley School. She graduated from Northwestern University with specialisation in communication. 

With a masters degree in business administration from Kellogg School of Management, Roshni was India’s richest woman in 2019, with a net worth of Rs 31,400 crore, according to IIFL Wealth Hurun India report. She was also featured in Forbes list of “The World’s Most Powerful Women” from 2017 to 2019.