Early life and education
Mr Nayar was born in 1962 and spent most of his childhood in Pantnagar, a town in the foothill of the Himalayas. “The school I attended was run by Catholic nuns, the Sisters of Notre Dam. The principal was an American, the history teacher was an Australian; so fortunately I had an international outlook from the start,” Mr Nayar had said in an interview. He picked up his orientation and attachment during his stay in Pantnagar. “Pantnagar was the Mecca for agricultural research and every second household in that town had someone who had visited to the US for research. That place has given me a lot,” he had said. Mr Nayar studied B Tech in mechanical engineering from College of Technology, G B Pant University. He did his masters in business management at the XLRI, Jamshedpur.
Career at HCL: Vineet joined HCL Tech in 1985 as a senior management trainee. After spending eight years in engineering, product management, sales, and marketing positions at HCL, he founded HCL Comnet in 1993, where he incubated the remote infrastructure management (RIM) industry. RIM, at present, is a multi-billion dollar IT outsourcing segment and a $1-bn business line for the company. It was at Comnet that Vineet developed and implemented many ground breaking policies and practices that became core to the EFCS philosophy.
In 2005, Vineet became president of HCL Tech and during the next seven years, he led a remarkable turnaround of the company, which saw its employee base expand from 30,000 to in excess of 84,000. The company witnessed a five-fold rise in revenue and a four-fold jump in profit during the period. Now, HCLT operates in 32 countries and continues to expand in size and scale.
In 2007, Vineet Nayar was appointed the CEO. He became vice-chairman of HCL Tech in November 2010. During this time, HCLT joined companies like Apple and Google, as one of only eight technology companies in the world with revenues above $2.5 billion, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 25 percent.
Mr Nayar represented HCL Tech at many national and international forums, including the World Economic Forum (WEF). He was a member of the global advisory board of women leaders’ and the Gender Parity Program as well as a community partner of the Forum of Young Global Leaders. Mr Nayar recently served as a “mentor” (co-chair) of WEF’s 2011 annual meeting of new champions conference.
Under Mr Nayar’s leadership, HCL Tech was named the “Best Employer” in India and Asia by Hewitt Associates, and received a “Workforce Management Optimas Award for HR Innovation” in the US.
Author & thinker
Mr Vineet Nayar is considered as one of the best thought leaders in the contemporary corporate India. He has penned the famous book, Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down, which Harvard Business Review Press published in 2010. The book, where Mr Nayar relates the story of his company’s success, has received rave reviews from the world’s leading business leaders including late C K Prahalad, Tom Peters, Gary Hamel, Ram Charan, and Victor Fung.
An advocate for social change: This value-driven leadership however has not been restricted to the corporate world, with Mr Nayar establishing a non-profit organization, Sampark, in 2004. Sampark, under its vision of "creating a million smiles” is working with ill-equipped schools in India to improve the quality of education through the “Teach the Teacher” program; investing in basic infrastructure and creating science laboratories in schools. Sampark also funds engineering education for students by providing scholarships to meritorious students, thereby increasing the opportunity for young and bright minds to further their education. In December 2010, Mr Nayar sold a million shares in HCL Technologies worth Rs 43 crore in a bid to raise money for Sampark.
Awards and recognitions: During his long association with HCL Tech, Vineet Nayar has received numerous awards, accolades and recognition. In recognition of his practical and theoretical works, Fortune magazine included Nayar in its global ‘Executive Dream Team’, and he was named in the 2011 Thinkers 50, a list of the world’s most influential people with innovative business ideas. He was conferred with the 'Leader in the Digital Age' Award at CeBIT, and the ‘Business HR Champion Award’ at the European HCM Excellence Awards in 2011. Mr Nayar was ranked the second best HR influencer by SHRM India in 2011and was adjudged as the ‘CEO of the Year’ at the Bloomberg UTVi CXO Awards in the same year.
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