Nandan Manohar Nilekani is the Managing Director, President and CEO of Infosys Technologies Limited, India’s flagship in the Information Technology world. Nandan is one of the co-founders of Infosys and served as its Managing Director, President and Chief Operating Officer since 1999. He has assumed the mantle of CEO from Narayan Murthy with effect from April 1, 2002. Between 1981 and 1987, Nandan Nilekani was Deputy Managing Director and was based in the US, responsible for Infosys’ worldwide sales and marketing, the mantle being later passed on to another OC – Phaneesh Murthy.

It was at Patni Computers in Mumbai that the seven co-founders of Infosys met. They moved to Pune where Infosys was born sometime in July 1981, in a small flat owned by Narayan Murthy. Thereafter, in 1983, the co-founders unanimously decided to shift their head quarters to Bangalore. Initially, Infosys had three offices in Koramangala and as the business rapidly grew, it moved to the Electronic City where it is based on a thirty-five acre campus.

A resident of Koramangala, the unassuming but dynamic Nandan Nilekani has his roots firmly in Bangalore, having studied in Cottons until 1967, when he moved for a brief while to Dharwad owing to his father’s transfer. Thereafter, Nandan Nilekani obtained his B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay and started his career in the software group of Patni Computers. The rest is history. Today, Nandan Nilekani holds close to a 5% stake in Infosys, India’s first company to be listed on NASDAQ. With revenues of Rs. 1900 crore in the financial year 2002, Infosys is India’s largest software firm and employees over 10,000 professionals.

Nandan is a co-founder of the National Association of Software and Services Company (NASSCOM) and a founding member of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE) Bangalore Chapter - a non-profit making global network of professionals seeking to promote entrepreneurship. Nandan Nilekani is Chairman of the Bangalore Agenda Task Force constituted by the Chief Minister of Karnataka to improve the infrastructure and image of the ‘Garden City’. Nandan Nilekani is also a Member of the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) sub-committee on Insider Trading and is on the Asia Pacific Regional Advisory Board of the London Business School. He has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from IIT Bombay, and was the Chief Guest at its 2002 Convocation. Recently, Fortune magazine rated Nandan along with Narayana Murthy as the Asian Businessmen of the Year, 2002.

Nandan Nilekani married Rohini, a social activist, author and journalist, in 1981. Nowadays, he spends over half his time travelling. During his days at IIT Bombay, Nandan Nilekani formed a quiz team with his batch-mate – Jayaram Ramesh, the prominent economic analyst. In fact, Nandan Nilekani, along with Narayan Murthy, has put in place a project aimed at rising close to one billion US dollars for the improvement of the IITs in India, and as a token gesture, Nandan offloaded fourteen thousand Infosys shares worth about Rupees seven crores in order to make his contribution to IIT Bombay. Reports have it that Nandan Nilekani’s contribution to Bombay is today perhaps over four times as much.

Infosys, which today has a market cap of between ten billion US dollars and forty billion US dollars, started off with a capital of ten thousand rupees and has become a unique chapter Indian corporate history. In fact, in February 2000, Infosys was worth Rs. 66,000 crore! The coming age of Infosys has today bridged the divide between the Silicon Valley and India and, as Nandan Nilekani himself points out, one need not be in Santa Clara to compete and be successful. Infosys as a business model is appreciated by the US investors and boasts of a market cap that is larger than its American rivals. It is a compliment to Nandan Nilekani’s suave personality, impeccable public profile and precise execution that he has taken over as CEO.

An icon of modern corporate India, Nandan Nilekani believes in high aspirations, perseverance and a creative imagination and maintains that the ancient Indian tradition of philosophical inquiry has enabled Indians to conceptualise software and be more flexible in their approach. Having taken over the driver’s seat at Infosys, Nandan Nilekani has his future plans firmly in place with a focus on People Resource Management and operations in emerging areas such as Business Process Management (BPM), IT outsourcing and systems integration. Needless to add, these services are structured to high-end Fortune 1000 clientele. Committed to the social principles followed by the United Nations as well as PSPD model – predictability, sustainability, profitability and de-risking, the Infosys ideology, as propounded by Nandan Nilekani, is likely to define the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility in India in the days to come

Nandan married Rohini, a social activist, author & journalist, in 1981.

Courtesy: Unfinished Symphony (2003)