Vineet Nayar is the Vice Chairman & Joint Managing Director of HCL Technologies Ltd. (HCLT), a $4.4 billion global information technology services company and author of the highly acclaimed management book “Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down” (Harvard Business Press, June 2010). He is also an acknowledged management visionary and a radical thinker who architected the company’s "Employees First, Customers Second‟ (EFCS) strategy, which transformed HCL’s business, through its inverted organizational structure which has helped create transparency and accountability within the organization and encourage a value-driven culture since its conception in 2005.
Vineet joined HCLT in 1985 after earning his MBA from XLRI, a leading business management school in Asia. In 1993, he founded Comnet, where he incubated the Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) industry, which is today a multi-billion dollar IT outsourcing segment. It was at Comnet that Vineet developed and implemented many groundbreaking policies and practices, which became core to the EFCS philosophy.
In 2005, Vineet became President of HCL Technologies and during the next five years he led a remarkable turnaround of the company, which saw its revenues and employee base triple. Today HCL employs over 85,000 people across the globe and continues to expand in size and scale under Vineet’s leadership, which has only strengthened through his appointment in 2007 as the company’s CEO and most recently its Vice Chairman 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 twenty five percent.
Under Vineet’s leadership, HCLT has been named “Best Employer” in India and Asia by Hewitt Associates, one of “Britain‟s Top Employers” by the CRF Institute, as well as receiving a “Workforce Management Optimas Award for HR Innovation” in the U.S. In addition to these, Vineet himself has emerged as a global thought leader and has been lauded by governments, business publications and influencers worldwide for his visionary strategy, his ability to create an entrepreneurial culture, and his warm-hearted, straight-talking approach; with his book “Employees First, Customers Second” receiving rich praise from influencers like the late C.K. Prahalad, Tom Peters, Gary Hamel, Ram Charan and Victor Fung. These accolades have led BusinessWeek to name HCLT as “one of the world‟s most influential companies” while Fortune recognized HCL as “the world‟s most modern management,” praise that has led HCL’s innovative management practices to be presented as case studies at both the Harvard and London Business Schools.
In 2005, Vineet became President of HCL Technologies and during the next five years he led a remarkable turnaround of the company, which saw its revenues and employee base triple. Today HCL employs over 85,000 people across the globe and continues to expand in size and scale under Vineet’s leadership, which has only strengthened through his appointment in 2007 as the company’s CEO and most recently its Vice Chairman 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 twenty five percent.
Under Vineet’s leadership, HCLT has been named “Best Employer” in India and Asia by Hewitt Associates, one of “Britain‟s Top Employers” by the CRF Institute, as well as receiving a “Workforce Management Optimas Award for HR Innovation” in the U.S. In addition to these, Vineet himself has emerged as a global thought leader and has been lauded by governments, business publications and influencers worldwide for his visionary strategy, his ability to create an entrepreneurial culture, and his warm-hearted, straight-talking approach; with his book “Employees First, Customers Second” receiving rich praise from influencers like the late C.K. Prahalad, Tom Peters, Gary Hamel, Ram Charan and Victor Fung. These accolades have led BusinessWeek to name HCLT as “one of the world‟s most influential companies” while Fortune recognized HCL as “the world‟s most modern management,” praise that has led HCL’s innovative management practices to be presented as case studies at both the Harvard and London Business Schools.
In addition to HCLT’s corporate recognition, Vineet has earned his own personal accolades, having recently been chosen by Fortune Magazine for its first ever, global “Executive Dream Team” which has been described as an “all star leadership” that “could coalesce and dominate in any industry”. This is in addition to his inclusion in the elite “Thinkers 50 List‟ which is a definitive list of the world’s top 50 business thinkers. In light of such notable personal accolades, Vineet represents HCLT at many prestigious national and international forums, which includes being a Governor for the ICT Industry as well undertaking several key roles at the World Economic Forum. These consist of being a member of the Global Advisory Board of Women Leader's and Gender Parity Program as well as a Community Partner of the Forum of Young Global Leaders. Vineet has also recently served as a “Mentor‟ (Co-Chair) of WEF’s 2011 Annual Meeting of New Champions conference.
This value driven leadership however has not been restricted to the corporate world, with Vineet establishing a non-profit organization called 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 labs 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. This commitment has seen Vineet being honored with the “Beacon of Hope” award by the 2009 Asha for Education, NYC/NJ Chapter.
Vineet spends his spare time reading and writing management strategy. He hosts two blogs, a personal one at http://www.vineetnayar.com and another for the Harvard Business Review, which can be found here.
