Bird’s Eye View

By 1991, Vineet Nayar, the former CEO of HCL Technologies, thought he was done working at HCL. He had joined the company in 1985, when it sold computers, and over the next six years, wore many hats. Nayar worked in different cities, heading sales as well as product management. And then, he was bitten by the start-up bug. During a cocktail conversation at President, a hotel in Mumbai, he told Shiv Nadar that he planned to move on.

Nadar, HCL’s founder and the current Chairman, is known for his persuasive powers. After the cocktails, the two men talked all night. They flew to Delhi the next morning for another round of conversation in HCL’s office. Nadar then invited Nayar home and the two ended up talking through the night, again. By the end of it, both had become friends. Nadar incubated HCL Comnet, a company that would