Nandan Nilekani

About Nandan Nilekani

In 1978 a young engineer walked into an interview at Patni Computer Systems in Mumbai. The man interviewing him was N. R. Narayana Murthy. Three years later the two of them, with five others, walked out to start Infosys. Nandan Mohanrao Nilekani was born in Bangalore on 2 June 1955 to Durga and Mohan Rao Nilekani, a Konkani-speaking family originally from Sirsi. His father managed the Mysore and Minerva Mills and held Fabian socialist convictions that Nilekani has said shaped him. He went to Bishop Cotton Boys' School in Bangalore, then St. Joseph's High School and Karnatak College in Dharwad, and took a degree in electrical engineering from IIT Bombay. At Infosys he worked through managing director, president and chief operating officer before becoming chief executive in March 2002. In the five years he ran it, the company's revenue grew sixfold to $3 billion. He handed the job to Kris Gopalakrishnan in April 2007 and became co-chairman. Then, in July 2009, he left the company entirely for a job with no precedent. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited him to chair the Unique Identification Authority of India at cabinet rank, and what UIDAI built was Aadhaar — a biometric identity system covering, by April 2017, 1.14 billion people. The World Bank's chief economist Paul Romer described it as the most sophisticated ID programme in the world. It has also drawn sustained criticism over privacy and the exposure of personal data, and that argument has never really stopped. He went on to head TAGUP, the government's technology advisory group. In August 2017, after the exit of chief executive Vishal Sikka, Nilekani returned to Infosys as non-executive chairman — and moved the company's centre of gravity back from California to its Bengaluru campus. He remains in that role. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2006. As of October 2025 he was the hundredth-richest person in India, with a net worth of about $3.2 billion. In July 2026 the Government of India announced a high-powered task force under him to recommend how to make the country's examination system leak-proof and technology-driven. He has been married to Rohini Nilekani, the philanthropist and author, since 1981; they have two children. Sources: English Wikipedia (biography, Infosys career, UIDAI and Aadhaar, awards and net worth, accessed August 2026); infosys.com. Photo: World Economic Forum, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Basic Information

Non-executive Chairman, Infosys; former Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India

Company Details

Infosys Limited

Information technology — consulting, outsourcing and digital services

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