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Global Reach
can only be done by U.S. citizens or green card holders. The 200,000-square foot facility will
accommodate a workforce of 1,000, most of them local hires. One floor is a segregated facility
for export-controlled work; the remainder will serve existing TCS contracts with Nielsen and
with U.S. banks.
HCL Technologies:
India’s Homegrown Hewlett-Packard Diversifies
It’s the well-known Silicon Valley garage startup story, except in
India. Shiv Nadar was an executive with Delhi Cloth Mills (DCM) in
1976, shortly after the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act was
passed. DCM was a diversified industrial company and Nadar
worked in the electronic calculator division. Sensing opportunity in
the market, he quit his job and, with Ajai Chowdry and four friends,
formed Microcomp Ltd. in Noida to design and manufacture the
Micro2200 scientific calculator.
Within a year, as it became apparent that IBM and other multinational
competitors would soon be raising the local ownership stake
in their operations or leaving India, Microcomp expanded into the
microcomputer business with investment from the six founders and
a 26% equity ownership by the Uttar Pradesh state government.
The company was renamed Hindustan Computers Ltd. (HCL).
Entrepreneurial Expansion
In 1980, HCL launched Far East Computers in Singapore to market
computer products in Asia and in 1981, HCL introduced a 16-bit
processor computer. HCL pioneered relational database management,
networking, and client-server solutions in the Indian market in
1983. Liberalization of computer technology imports in the mid-
1980s opened India to personal computing. HCL launched its own
Unix-based BusyBee brand PC and formed HCL Office Automation
to provide business IT and network solutions. In 1987, it was India’s
largest company by revenues.
With SCI Systems as its manufacturing partner, HCL acted on advice
from McKinsey and briefly entered the U.S. computer market as
HCL America, headquartered in Silicon Valley. As the first Indian IT
company to start a U.S. company, HCK was making a bold move,
but when the market collapsed for minicomputers soon after, HCL
changed course, applying its Unix capability to consulting.
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