[TechSparks Grand Finale Speaker] Nandan Nilekani: From tech start-up guy to Time’s 100 Most Influential

Infosys founder, UIDAI architect, and politician. Of all the hats Nandan Nilekani dons, it’s probably the one of a techie entrepreneur that he wears most easily.

The company he founded with six colleagues over three decades ago has been a trailblazer in many ways. But its biggest achievement has been to set the stage for the entry of Indian software firms to the global arena.

Nandan’s journey from a middle class family to Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world has plenty of lessons for us. That’s why we at YourStory invited him to the TechSparks Grand Finale 2014 to tell us about his journey.

After all, even two decades ago, Infosys’s situation wasn’t too different from that of most of our startup companies today. There were challenges, there were crises and of course all the problems that come with rapid growth in a virgin market.

Nandan, a key member of the company through the initial days, is best placed to tell us how they dealt with those issues and made Infosys what it is today.

But Infosys was not the only startup Nandan help pioneer. When the Indian government envisioned an ambitious project that would assign unique identification to each individual to ensure that the state welfare programs reach the right people, it was Nandan that they turned to, to set it up.

The Aadhar project, as it was commonly called, issued ID cards to more than 400 million individuals in the first three years of operation.

Nandan will be the keynote speaker at TechSparks and will share his insights on ‘Building a Global Business out of India’.

He will speak about the importance of investing in building a global brand, the importance of thinking big and how scaling up is a discipline. He will also share his learnings from the Aadhar experience of ‘building a digital ecosystem for innovation.’

Nandan has since moved on. Earlier this year, he resigned from the UIDAI to participate in politics in keeping with his long standing plan of public service, a lesson he imbibed from his father.

In 2006, Nandan received the prestigious 'Padma Bhushan.' Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and 2009. He is the author of 'Imagining India', which was one of the finalists for the FT-Goldman Sachs Book Award for the year 2009. Foreign Policy magazine listed him as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2010.

His new book, ‘Rebooting India’ with computer scientist Viral Shah about how governance can be transformed with technology, will be out in the next few months.

TechSparks is not just about innovation but also about interaction. Do you have questions in mind for our speakers? Here’s an opportunity for you. Let us know and we will ask them for you at the TechSparks Grand Finale 2014.

Don't hesitate, because he who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.

Come, hear Nandan Nilekani speak at India's biggest entrepreneurial summit - TechSparks' Grand Finale on October 17-18 at Bangalore.

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