HCL Technologies’ Vineet Nayar retires to pursue philanthropy

close of Mumbai trading on Friday. "As I pursue my dream, of creating a Million Smiles through Sampark Foundation, I carry with me goodwill, best wishes and lots of learning. I also hope to continue to add value to both HCL Technologies and HCL Corporation through my continued association," Nayar said in the statement. His retirement is not entirely a surprise, as he had already stepped down as CEO earlier this year. "See, he was not in an operational role, so operationally there would be no difference," said Shashi Bhusan, an analyst at brokerage Prabhudas Lilladher in Mumbai. "The company became one of the bestperforming IT players under him. He was like a one-man army behind the company," he said. On Nayar's watch, HCL Technologies' revenues grew from $1.3 billion to $4.2 billion in five years, and the employee base tripled. In July 2012, Nayar sold all 27 lakh shares held by him in the company for Rs133.58 crore, among other reasons for supporting work at Sampark Foundation, which he founded. "More than anything else, I think he was a very energetic person," said a senior fund manager at a multinational financial company, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media on individual companies. "Increasingly I've observed that in this super-competitive software services space, the winners are often not the people capable of strategising and all that but simply people capable of bringing enormous amounts of energy to the table," he said. Nayar could be faulted for one or two things, such as his purchasing Axon PLC, "but then everyone has 20:20 vision in hindsight," the fund manager said. "You can't fault a man for one thing when he got many other things right." Under Nayar, HCL Tech reported consecutive quarters of winning over a billion dollars in total contract value.