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

He was the last founder chairman in the Indian IT services industry to step down.

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