Nilekani, a blend of tradition with technology

The return of Nandan Nilekani as non-executive chairman of Infosys, other than settling the nerves of the investors, will bring a lot of other things to the platter of the IT giant.

As soon as the news of Nilekani mediating and returning to the board of the IT major broke, the sentiment at the Dalal Street for the scrips of India’s second largest IT company completely changed from negative to positive. The stocks, have almost returned to the price prevailing pre-exit of Vishal Sikka.

Nilekani, who is expected to change the market sentiment of the company, will also instill much needed confidence among the company’s institutional investors.

Some of the domestic institutional investors who had written letter to company's board seeking Nilekani’s return told DH that Nilekani was suitable candidate to take the company out of mess, as he combines technological foresight with faith of the company’s co-founders.

“Nilekani has created a lot of other things after going out from the Infosys. He has overseen the enrollment of Aadhaar — a global success story on how to develop a identification system for a billion population,” said one of the signatories to the letter.

Nilekani, having worked a lot of time with co-founder N R Narayana Murthy, will also put the latter at ease with regards to the corporate governance issues that he has been raising.

Infosys, under the aegis of Sikka had embarked on a journey of expanding into new services, given that growth in the traditional services has seen decline. These new services have seen significant traction over the past two years, and have been highest growing segments for the IT major.

Nilekani, on his part, has been integral part of digital revolution that is taking place in the country right now. Ravi Venkatesan, company’s outgoing co-chairman had emphasised last week on the company’s culture.

Given that Nilekani has overseen the growth of IT major in his formative days, it is expected that he will blend new age technologies with age old traditions of the IT major.