The Rise of the INDIAPRENEUR

Abstract

In his 2008 bestseller Imagining India, the co-founder of software giant Infosys and former UIDAl head Nandan Nilekani recalls an incident from the early 1980s when Infosys had relocated to Bengaluru from Pune and had hired a "few bright young engineers from lIT-Madras". Within a few weeks, Nilekani writes, one ofthem came to him and said he wanted to quit to join a public sector company in Bengaluru. His reason: a government company will never go under and the job I have will be for life. "The security of such employment was a very compelling argument in those years for an engineer from lIT," wrote Nilekani, an lIT alumnus himself.