Birthday Special: Journey from a garage to a Rs 12 lakh crore tech company, how Shiv Nadar built HCL’s empire

Shiv Nadar Birthday Special: Shiv Nadar, the country’s veteran businessman and founder of HCL Technologies, is celebrating his 81st birthday today on 14 July 2026. Nadar was born on July 14, 1945 in a Tamil family in Moolaipozhy village in Madras Presidency (today’s Thoothukudi district, Tamil Nadu). Nadar founded HCL in 1976 and over the next three decades transformed the IT hardware company into an IT enterprise. In 2008, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan award by the Government of India for his significant contribution to the IT industry.

Shiv Nadar started his career in 1967 with Cooper Engineering Limited of Walchand Group in Pune. However, his dream was not just to have a job, he was seeing the future of computers and electronics in India. With this thinking, he soon left this job and now decided to do his own business with 8 friends.

HCL started from a garage

In the year 1976, along with some of his engineer friends, he founded a company in a small garage in Delhi, named Hindustan Computer Limited (HCL), which is today one of the leading companies in the tech industry under the name of HCL Technologies. The beginning was not easy at all. Lack of money, limitations of technology, tough competition in the market, but Shiv Nadar believed that the purpose of technology is to make the lives of common people easier. This thinking gradually took HCL forward. Later the company focused on manufacturing computer hardware and electronics equipment, so that computer technology could be popularized in India.

(Shiv Nadar and Roshni Nadar giving a check for the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund to the then PM Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on January 17, 2005)

Business in 60 countries including America and Europe

In the 1980s and 1990s, HCL moved beyond hardware to software and IT services from India to the world. Gradually the company entered the international market. including America, Europe, Asia HCL Tech Today it is working in about 60 countries. At present the company has more than 2.25 lakh employees. HCL today is among the world’s leading companies in advanced services such as cloud computing, cyber security, digital transformation and enterprise software.

Daughter Roshni Nadar made chairman

After leading the company for more than four decades, Shiv Nadar took a historic decision in the year 2020. He took his daughter Roshni Nadar Malhotra Was made the Chairman of HCL. Roshni Nadar became the first woman chairman of HCL. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, today Shiv Nadar’s net worth is $29.5 billion. He is the 82nd richest person in the world. The market cap of HCL Tech is around Rs 3.31 lakh crore.

Shiv Nadar with daughter Roshni Nadar, (Source- Social media)

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Shiv Nadar, one of the biggest donors of the country

Shiv Nadar is not only known as a successful businessman. He is also included in the list of India’s biggest philanthropists. Through Shiv Nadar Foundation, he established schools, colleges and universities, so that education could reach every section of the society. According to the Haroon Philanthropy List 2025, Nadar donated Rs 2,708 crore last year. That means a daily average of Rs 7.4 crore. He has been number-1 in this list for the fourth time in the last 5 years.