HCL's Vineet Nayar: Maverick CEO of a maverick company
For the past month or so, the IT industry has been rife with rumours that the HCL veteran is set to quit the country’s fourth-largest IT company.
By Harsimran Julka, ET Bureau |
Forty years ago, Vineet Nayar, then a young boy, got off a train to brush his teeth. Nayar froze when he saw the train moving. Luckily, a woman — a fruit vendor on the platform — hoisted him into the last compartment of the train. Nayar was united with his family at the next station.
Forty years later, Nayar, chief executive of the $4-billion HCL Technologies, doesn’t want to miss another train.
For the past month or so, the Indian IT industry has been rife with rumours that the HCL veteran is set to quit the country’s fourth-largest IT services company to make his entrepreneurial debut. He has spent the past 27 years at HCL.
Speculation was fuelled when Nayar sold his entire stock holding in HCL Technologies for Rs 134 crore and the stock plummeted by 4%. Financial services major Morgan Stanley published a report about a transition announcement, possibly this August. Meanings were read into Nayar’s appointment as joint managing director, mid-May.
Departing from its policy of not responding to market speculation, HCL Technologies released a statement on the Bombay Stock Exchange saying Nayar continues to be the chief executive and vice-chairman of the company.
Going, Staying
“He is as external-facing, and as maverick as Nandan Nilekani used to be for Infosys Technologies,” says an industry veteran, a friend of both Nilekani and Nayar. In India’s IT industry, the “jodi” of HCL’s Nadar and Nayar is likened to Infosys’ Narayana Murthy and his protege Nilekani.
In the report, Morgan Stanley analysts expect Anant Gupta, president of HCL Infrastructure Services Division (ISD), to take on a bigger role as Nayar steps back a little.
Unlike Nayar, known as a voluble communicator, Gupta is more in the mould of Kris Gopalakrishnan of Infosys, say HCL executives. “Anant keeps quiet, much like Kris, but knows how to win key relationships, get things done and win business. He holds key relationships across clients,” an HCL insider told ET Magazine.
Industry watchers credit Nayar’s foresight in investing in the IT infrastructure outsourcing space which propelled HCL ahead of larger rivals Infosys, Wipro and TCS in that business. Like he tweeted on June 7: “Always look at momentum markets. If you spot it first and jump right in, the current will take you upstream, no matter how slow you row!”
Forty years later, Nayar, chief executive of the $4-billion HCL Technologies, doesn’t want to miss another train.
For the past month or so, the Indian IT industry has been rife with rumours that the HCL veteran is set to quit the country’s fourth-largest IT services company to make his entrepreneurial debut. He has spent the past 27 years at HCL.
Speculation was fuelled when Nayar sold his entire stock holding in HCL Technologies for Rs 134 crore and the stock plummeted by 4%. Financial services major Morgan Stanley published a report about a transition announcement, possibly this August. Meanings were read into Nayar’s appointment as joint managing director, mid-May.
Departing from its policy of not responding to market speculation, HCL Technologies released a statement on the Bombay Stock Exchange saying Nayar continues to be the chief executive and vice-chairman of the company.
Going, Staying
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One thing this “will he-won’t he” episode demonstrates is that Vineet Nayar is Mr HCL. Not every day do rumours of a professional CEO’s resignation cause a stock price to plunge. Industry executives speak about Nayar and HCL Tech in the way they spoke about Nandan Nilekani and Infosys. “He is as external-facing, and as maverick as Nandan Nilekani used to be for Infosys Technologies,” says an industry veteran, a friend of both Nilekani and Nayar. In India’s IT industry, the “jodi” of HCL’s Nadar and Nayar is likened to Infosys’ Narayana Murthy and his protege Nilekani.
In the report, Morgan Stanley analysts expect Anant Gupta, president of HCL Infrastructure Services Division (ISD), to take on a bigger role as Nayar steps back a little.
Unlike Nayar, known as a voluble communicator, Gupta is more in the mould of Kris Gopalakrishnan of Infosys, say HCL executives. “Anant keeps quiet, much like Kris, but knows how to win key relationships, get things done and win business. He holds key relationships across clients,” an HCL insider told ET Magazine.
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If Nayar does step back from the captain’s seat, his almost counter-intuitive logic and leadership style will be missed, says the executive. Post the 2008 Wall Street collapse, when all IT companies were cutting their sales force, Nayar put in precious profits to hire more people. HCL Tech also continued to hire in big numbers in client markets. In 2011, offshore advisory TPI listed HCL among the Top 6 Global Providers on total 2011 TCV awarded. Industry watchers credit Nayar’s foresight in investing in the IT infrastructure outsourcing space which propelled HCL ahead of larger rivals Infosys, Wipro and TCS in that business. Like he tweeted on June 7: “Always look at momentum markets. If you spot it first and jump right in, the current will take you upstream, no matter how slow you row!”
Nayar’s Style
Given Nayar’s penchant for doing things in style, his stepping back or quitting from HCL isn’t likely to be a quiet press release. In a recent interview to ET, Nayar spoke about doing things “Father McGrath style”.
Back in 1983, when he was student at XLRI Jamshedpur, 50 adivasis armed with knives stabbed a teacher, Father McGrath. After the adivasis left, Father McGrath got up and declared the whole thing staged. “Now I want you to sit down and write what you saw,” the Father said.
“If you want to say something, say it in the Father McGrath way. Else don’t say at all,” he told ET. That perhaps explains Nayar’s dancing to Bollywood numbers at town halls or his forthright, juicy, headline-grabbing comments to the media.
The other major influence on Nayar has been HCL chairman Shiv Nadar, a quiet man known for his street smarts and foresight. HCL started out in 1975 making scientific calculators and plunged into computer manufacturing a year later, when demand was almost “nil”.
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Nayar joined Hindustan Computers Ltd, a firm started by Shiv Nadar and six others in 1976, after graduating from XLRI in 1985. But the big leap came in 1994, when Nayar was given a free rein to launch an IT infrastructure and networking arm for the company, HCL Comnet. Business took off during the Y2K boom and Nayar was appointed president of HCL Technologies in April 2005. Soon he became Nadar’s blue-eyed boy.Nayar is also known to admire Jack Welch for “clarity of thought in execution”, and Steve Jobs for his “boldness and audacious excellence”. This is what he had to say about Jobs: “Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Jobs had made it his annual KRA.”
Whether Nayar wants to emulate his icon and take a shot at changing the world is something only he knows for now.
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