Shiv Nadar and Family

HCL started as a computer company. It became a proof of concept for Indian talent.

When Shiv Nadar built India's first indigenous microcomputer in 1976, the ambition was not primarily commercial. It was a demonstration that Indian engineers could do what IBM had been doing, and do it without IBM. HCL Technologies grew from that hardware venture into a global IT services company with 225,000 employees across 60 countries, eventually becoming the foundational category creator in remote infrastructure management for multinational corporations.

Nadar stepped down as chairman in 2020, passing leadership to his daughter Roshni Nadar Malhotra. The Shiv Nadar Foundation's $1.1 billion investment in education, from K-12 schools to universities, is the institutional expression of the same conviction that built the company: that the binding constraint on India's development has never been capital or land, but the number of well-trained people available to do consequential work.