peers, is a charmer with a gift of the
gab, who can engage people from
all walks of life—be it a budding
entrepreneur seeking words of
wisdom, an executive disillusioned
at work, a prospective client who
can bring in the money for Infosys
or a discerning academic—and
influence them more often than not.
Take, for instance, Pulitzer
Prize winning journalist Thomas L
Friedman, who visited the Infosys
campus in Bengaluru in February
2004 to interview Nilekani on
outsourcing. While Friedman had
walked in with a lot questions,
he walked out of the interview
with the title of his bestseller,
The World is Flat, inspired by a
seemingly innocuous observation
by Nilekani on globalisation, “The
playing field is being levelled.”
“His [Nilekani’s] ability tonetwork and connect with people
and clients is extraordinary. He
could build consensus,” says V
Balakrishnan, former chief financial
officer at Infosys. “He is somebody
who can align everybody to a
particular line and is extraordinary
at winning over people.”t
he world may not have known
Nilekani had NR Narayana
Murthy, the force behind
Infosys, not identified the spark in
him way back in February 1979. Back
then, Murthy was known to hire
meritorious candidates for Patni
Computer Systems irrespective
of their field of study or work
experience, prompting Nilekani, who
had a bachelor’s degree in electrical
engineering from IIT Bombay, to
try his luck. “I gave him a test inadvanced pattern recognition and he
came out successful. I asked him in
the interview what he was planning
to do. He said he was waiting to
take GMAT,” recalls Murthy of his
first encounter with Nilekani.
Nilekani didn’t write GMAT. In
1981, two years after joining Patni
as a software engineer trainee, he
set up Infosys with Murthy and five
others. He delivered from the word
go. In the early days at Infosys, he
did a “good job” in leading a team of
six engineers in the US to develop
software for one of the company’s
clients, says Murthy. Next, Nilekani
led a team that would develop a
“functionally and technologically
enhanced apparel package” on an
IBM 4341 computer for another early
customer of Infosys at Grand Rapids,
Michigan. He was also instrumental
in winning an outsourcing contractfrom General Electric, one of Infosys’s
biggest clients in the mid-1990s.
Infosys scaled great heights
after Nilekani succeeded Murthy
as the chief executive in 2002. By
the end of his five-year tenure in
April 2007, when he quit as CEO to
make way for Kris Gopalakrishnan,
Infosys’s market cap had jumped
367 percent to `115,307 crore.
Under Nilekani, Infosys was
also closing in on larger rival Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS), which
listed on the bourses in 2004. For
instance, Infosys’s total income
was 84 percent of TCS’s in 2004-
05, 80 percent the year after and 87
percent in 2007, while the company
trumped TCS on net profits in 2005
and 2007 (earning 4 and 0.7 percent
more, respectively). A decade
later, without Nilekani, in 2016-17Infosys’s revenue stood at 56 percent
of TCS and profit at 54 percent.
“Nilekani complemented the rest
of the promoters with strategic clarity
and customer-facing outlook,” says V
Ravichandar, chairman and managing
director at Feedback Consulting and
Nilekani’s friend since 1989. “Because
Infosys was reputed to have great
internal processes in functional areas
such as human resources or finance,
Nilekani offered clients help in those
areas. This is his way of thinking how
could Infosys become more valuable
to customers. If you solve a customer’s
real problem, they will also give you
more of their time and business.”I
t wasn’t just Infosys that was
keeping Nilekani busy. In 2000,
he cut his teeth in public policy
and government affairs when he
accepted then Karnataka Chief
Minister SM Krishna’s invitation to
chair the Bangalore Agenda Task
Force (BATF), set up to address civic
issues, a development that would set
the tone for a series of collaborations
with both the state government and
the Centre. Nilekani’s appetite for
such engagements stems from his love
for simplifying problems at scale.
While the 2000s saw Nilekani
being twice named among Time
magazine’s 100 most influential
people in the world, in 2006 and
2009, and awarded the Padma
Bhushan in 2006, he was also
investing enough and more time
in running BATF or planning the
Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban
Renewal Mission and the Goods and
Services Tax Network. “Nilekani had
limited patience for pilots. He said
pilots are fine but we finally need
implementation at scale,” recalls
Ravichandar of Nilekani’s four-
year stint at the helm of BATF.
None of those assignments,
however, tested Nilekani’s patience
as much as UIDAI and its contentious
Aadhaar project, which is still
muddled in controversies over privacy
breaches and data security. Pugalia70 | forbes india december 29, 2017“he is somebody who can
align everybody to a particular
line and win people over.”
Richest
10 0 IndIans
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