Leadership Rewarded - PadmBhushan Shiv Nadar

January 28, 2008

Leadership Rewarded

Shiv NadarFounder - HCL, Chairman & Chief Strategy Officer - HCL Technologies

At a time when India had a total of 250 computers, Shiv Nadar led a young team which passionately believed in and bet on the growth of the IT industry. That vision in 1976, born out of a Delhi "barsaati" (akin to a garage start up), has resulted 3 decades later in creating a US $ 4.7 Billion (Rs 19,000 Crore) Global Enterprise. From designing India's first PC at the same time as global IT peers in 1978; to working on the Boeing Dreamliner's Flight Management Systems today, HCL has stayed a true Pioneer of Modern Computing. HCL now employs over 53,000 professionals, with a global presence in 18 countries and a pan India presence across 360 locations. HCL's business spans IT Hardware manufacturing & distribution, System Integration, Technology & Software services, Business Process Outsourcing, and Infrastructure Management.

Acknowledged as a visionary by the IT industry and his peers, Shiv Nadar has often made daring forays based on his conviction of the future. At a time when hardware was the name of the game, Nadar foresaw the huge potential in the area of IT education & learning from which NIIT was born. Albeit a more recent entrant in the software services space, HCL, in a short span of 7 years is already among top Indian IT software majors and a force to reckon with for global technology giants.

Shiv Nadar firmly believes that, "If you want to empower people, give them the tools. There's enough entrepreneurship in this country to take care of the rest." He is quick to grasp new opportunities, select a team to transform his ideas into reality and delegate the project to competent professionals.

In January 2005 Shiv Nadar received the CNBC Business Excellence award from the Prime Minister of India. In February 2005 he was listed by "India Today" in the Power List of India's leaders from all walks of life, for building a global IT Enterprise from scratch in 3 decades, creating valuable JVs with marquee partners such as Deutsche Bank, and creating jobs in Belfast when India was being criticized for just the opposite. More recently, Shiv Nadar received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2007 in the `Services' category for being "a doyen of the Indian IT industry and perhaps its chief architect". The University of Madras awarded him an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Science in November 2007, for his contribution to not just the IT industry in India, but also for his "transformation of technological culture globally".

Determined to give back to the society that nurtured him, Shiv Nadar has been quietly supporting many critical social causes. He founded the not-for-profit SSN College of Engineering in Chennai, which is today among the top ten private engineering colleges in India, enabling world class higher education for students across socio-economic strata. Shiv Nadar is also building 6 "VidyaGyan" public schools in Uttar Pradesh that will provide free, world class education to rural children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. His belief is that quality education to a select few will take the positive impact of education to where it can truly uplift & transform lives and help narrow the socio-economic divide. He is an active member of the Executive Board of the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. Concerned with the public health issues in India, Shiv Nadar is involved with the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) - working to establish standards in public health education and to create a network of innovative world class India-relevant institutes of public health. He also supports initiatives for the girl child and the empowerment of women.

Shiv Nadar currently resides in Delhi with wife, Kiran and daughter, Roshni.