HCL Technologies (A)

When Vineet Nayar became president of HCL Technologies, a global IT services business, in April 2005, he knew the company needed drastic change. Since its founding as a hardware company in the 1970s, HCL had grown into an enterprise with $3.7 billion in revenues and a market capitalization of $5.1 billion. The company had 41,000 employees in 11 countries, but it was ill-prepared for the increasingly competitive market. With the shift from hardware to software and services, HCL had slipped behind its Indian competitors and multinational companies. Details the first phase of the transformation Nayar led in hopes of rejuvenating the industry pioneer. The tagline for this phase was "Employee First, Customer Second."