One of the six co-founders of Infosys and architect of India’s Aadhaar biometric ID system Nandan Nilekani shared his journey in a recent interview with LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. Nandan said in the interview that “he didn’t really have a specific goal in mind” and his defining moments were when he became a ‘young rebel’ to join IIT Bombay and the day he met Narayana Murthy for the first time.
Talking about his experience of meeting Infosys founder Narayana Murthy in 1978 for the first time, Nandan said, “He was charismatic, he was ambitious. He set great goals. I would have done anything if you asked me to jump off the cliff, I would have jumped off the cliff. So I think it was a great experience working with him.”
Nandan Nilekani shared the backstory prior to joining Narayana Murthy’s team at Patni Computers in the 1980s.
“So, you know, in those days, I’m talking about 60s, India or early 70s, you know, children, they would either go for engineering or medicine, and I didn’t want to be a doctor, so it had to be engineering,” he told Roslansky.
I did not listen to my dad and joined IIT Bombay instead of IIT Madras
He narrated, “My father sent me a telegram (in 1973) and said, ‘join IIT Madras chemical engineering.’ So I said, ‘I’m not gonna listen to you. I’ll join electrical engineering. IIT Bombay. So I chose a different profession and a different college,” explaining his small “act of rebellion”.
In the video, Linkedin CEO Ryan Roslansky narrated how Nandan graduated from IIT Bombay in 1978 with a degree in electrical engineering. “While his classmates had their eyes set on grad school, he ended up getting sick on the day of the entrance exam and missed it. He wasn’t quite sure of what to do next. That’s when he heard about Patni Computer Systems (in Pune)– a small company that was using the most exciting new technology at the time, mini computers.”
Adding further, Nandan Nilekani said “I came at a time when computing was moving from mainframes to mini computers. And when I heard about this mini computer company, I said, Wow, this sounds exciting. And I walked into a small office (Patni Computers) of a gentleman called Narayan Murthy, who was the head of software for this firm. It was the most unusual job offer I had, because he asked me some questions, some problem solving questions, and fortunately, I managed to get them right. So he gave me a job.”
“He was charismatic, he was ambitious. He set great goals. I would have done anything if he had asked me to jump off the cliff, I would have jumped off the cliff. So I think it was great experience working with him. And the other thing is, computer time was very precious, because, you know, those days you couldn’t get so the fact that there was this mini computer with unlimited time, wow… And then when Mr. Murthy said, I want to start a company. I said, Yeah, I’m on. So here I was, 25 and a half years old, joining my leader in setting up a new company in the 1980s.”
Just do it… connecting the dots
In conversation with LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky, Nandan Nilekani shared leadership lessons and his journey creating Aadhaar. “Within a month of joining Aadhaar, I announced we’d achieve 600 million unique IDs by the time I stepped down. It sounded audacious and implausible – people thought I was crazy. But this goal galvanized my team. Setting an ambitious goal made everything else disappear,” said Nandan.
When tasked with building Aadhaar, Nandan didn’t have much to go on. “All I had was one page saying, ‘Give every Indian a unique ID.’ It didn’t say how… Just, ‘Do it.’”
The interview highlighted that at Aadhaar, Nandan united two drastically different cultures – Silicon Valley technologists in t-shirts and hierarchical government officials in suits – around one shared, audacious goal: enroll 600 million people in just a few years.
“I get up every morning wanting to learn new things,” Nandan shared. “The future is about what only humans can do: empathy, compassion, and connecting the dots,” he said.