If your actions inspire others to dream, learn, do more and become more, you are a leader. And few people can boast of being a leader in true sense than Shiv Nadar, Chairman and CEO, HCL, who stands head and shoulder above his peers. A man known for his far-sightedness, entrepreneurship and business acumen, Nadar's fame could be gauged from the fact that he has been quoted for his vision of a networked future by the reputed Time magazine. His achievement and exemplary success has also earned him a place amongst 'the electronic elite' in Geoffrey James's book "The Giant Killers".

This is how the world looks at him--as one of India's most effective entrepreneurs. In fact, Nadar initiated HCL as a startup firm in 1976 and by dint of his hard work and perseverance he has turned it into a rapidly growing $650 million Indian IT conglomerate with offices spread across 33 locations in more than 14 countries. Not only this, it has become the first PC vendor in India to have cross the 100k PC milestone. One of the country's oldest corporates to dabble in information technology, HCL was ranked at number One in the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 DQ Top 20 Giants listings.

And the man behind this stupendous feat has been no one but Nadar himself who toiled hard to make HCL's presence felt in the international arena, that too with a bang. In fact, when Nadar quit DCM to form Hindustan Computers Ltd in a one-room tenement three decades back, little did he realize that he would lay the foundation of IT's growth in India. Today under his mastery eyes HCL has become a leader in hardware, software and networking communications. In fact, Nadar played some very decisive role in restructuring, strategic alliances and client rationalization, high-end R&D, software applications and BPO, which gave him an edge over his competitors.

An engineer by profession, Nadar has helped HCL grow into a company having net worth of $1.2 billion. It was because of his pioneering effort that HCL got into an alliance with Aalayance Inc, a US-based $4.5-million company and Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) in the field of Storage Management Initiative Specification. A man who has stood by his conviction, Nadar, despite all his success and achievements remains a simple, down-to-earth about his business approaches. Declared IT Man of the Year for 1995 by Dataquest, HCL's future under Nadar stands much to gain in days to come.