Unknown business does not scare us: Nadar

What will be the scenario of Indian IT after 10 years?

Rizwan

Trends I foresee in the coming decade:

Industry consolidation: As more and more global partners understand that there is greater value in having one window offering the entire portfolio of services, industry consolidation will emerge as an important trend. Customers and global partners have started demanding a single solution provider addressing multiple needs of a business.

Future of technology will be driven by cloud computing, virtualization, SaaS, mobile computing, thin clients; Intelligent IT will be in greater demand led by customer expectations.

Anticipation is that extant PC/data center architecture and software will become less strategic. Cloud or intelligent computing will offer shared services, which will be more cost effective. Data centers will no longer operate inside a company but on a virtual platform.

HCL has always believed in being fleet footed, aligning itself to changing landscapes. When hardware was the name of the game, we pioneered it. When software became a trend, we entered it midstream and became the fastest growing company in this offering. High adaptability has always been our strong suit. We anticipate many changing trends in the coming decade and are equipped to realign rapidly as the industry environment changes.

What was the main purpose of you starting a company? To earn more and more money?

Saheer

While employed with DCM, the entrepreneurial bug had bitten me hard. I led a product development initiative at DCM and was in a sort of a CEO-like role from a very early time. The exposure left me wanting to do more on my own. So I left the safety net of DCM with five other intrepid fellow founders and cast off on my own.

It was “youthful exuberance, enormous energy and nothing but undying optimism” that drove a starry-eyed bunch of 6 young entrepreneurs to leave their secure corporate jobs with a dream that the microprocessor would change the world. And we wanted to be at the focal point of this change. Money was a byproduct and not the sole purpose of starting the company. We started off with a dream, we never knew that HCL would become a $5 billion enterprise in the next 34 years of its existence.

Do you have the zeal and energy to become an entrepreneur again?

Lakshmi Narasimhan

Now that I have stepped down from the frontal role at HCL, I have enough time to devote to things which I do best — reflect and strategize for the future. From building institutions which create cutting-edge technologies to building institutions which create leaders, the transition from being a corporate entrepreneur to a social entrepreneur has been a journey in itself.

When I thought of giving back to the society, I could not think of anything with a greater impact than education. I am a product of education, and when I now see children’s lives being altered the way my own was, by some of the transformational work the Shiv Nadar Foundation is doing, that is something that really sustains and rejuvenates me. This part of my journey as an entrepreneur has just begun and I plan to do much work with the Foundation to impact more lives.

What special obstacles do women entering business face? Did you ever think of including a woman in your founding team?

Sangoi

At the time when we were just a start up, the choice was not between men or women, but the very best or less. The only criteria for our selection was merit and it was only incidental that it was all men who founded HCL back in the 1970s. We are all a product of socio economic ethos and in those days we saw fewer women entering the work force.

However, we did have some powerful women in our workforce. Neelam Dhawan, who introduced one of the most innovative pricing policies of computers in the history of computing in India, was one. She totally unbundled the computer price from all services, peripherals and software. This policy shot up our revenues by 60 per cent and grew the profit by more than 100 per cent.

Neelam was therefore from the significant league of those who really made growth of HCL possible by taking direct risks and executing tasks to perfection. Today we see more women occupy the most challenging and powerful positions in corporate houses and politics, which is a sign of an evolved and well-rounded society. Within HCL, we see much diversity in terms of persons from different religions, sex, geographies come together to work as a team towards a common goal.

Can you describe a challenging work issue you had to face, and how you dealt with it?

Anil

Over a period of time, we have positioned ourselves from vendor to strategic partner by consciously working for it. At times, this required HCL to turn down business. We’ve just walked away, and we have learned to say, “no”. Our managers needed re-orientation because most of us are very bad at saying “no”.

At one point of time, we had a conversation with a client who needed help with high-precision manufacturing for aircraft class aluminum. We initially tried to turn them down because we did not know metallurgy, but it turned out to be enormously profitable. Unknown business does not scare us because that’s what we’ve done all our lives. But if a business opportunity does not use our strengths, we have to say “no”.

Today, when I look at software business, it’s much simpler than it was in the early days when we were building HCL. Saying “no” had to come to us. It’s a matter of vital importance. You have to say “no” if the machine is not going to do the job. Otherwise, for that one customer you could lose ten.