Nandan Nilekani, Co-Chairman – Infosys said the desire was to create a company that was different from multinationals and put the employee at the center of it. He told CNBC-TV18 that Infosys was a calling and they were committed to it. He added that it was about creating a multi-generation company, which lasts for hundreds of years and continues to do well and converting the weaknesses into strength.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18’s exclusive interview with Nandan Nilekani:

Q: Did you ever expect Infosys to be at where it is currently? You were sitting in a 10x10 feet apartment and suddenly started off the success story. But what did you actually aspire for when the 7 of you got together? Was there a personal mission statement?

A: Obviously, we had no idea it would reach this size and scale. But the desire was to create a new kind of a company different from multinationals, family-owned businesses, public sector companies and to create a company with a different ethos value system and put the employee and the person at the center of it. The size is a by-product of that.

Q: What is the secret sauce that keeps all of you together? You have an idea or a dream but partners leave you along the way. What keeps the 7 of you and a bunch of people together?

A: For us, Infosys is a calling; it’s like joining the Church or joining the Army. We are absolutely and fanatically committed to a great institution, which also outlives all of us. In a sense, we don’t want to create a one-generation company. We have to create a multi-generation company which lasts for hundreds of years and continues to do well.

Q: When you started off, you decided to do something that had not been done in India before. It was supposed to be a different sort of a company and you have also created a different market and a whole new business model. How did the whole preemptive management and style of working come about? What are the parallels of preemptive management as sometimes you could be ahead of your time perhaps?

A: The early 90s was a dramatically different change because the markets opened up, globalization started happening and liberalization. Large companies started coming into India, and we were a very small company. So, we were into a lot of introspection whether we had a future with competing with the big boys and either we get out of this game or go for broke or for the big time. So, we took a very calculative decision for the big time.

Q: What is that checklist because entrepreneurs are supposed to dive in and take the plunge? Is there no checklist?

A: There is no checklist, it is all about survival.

Q: How do you sell yourself as a starter?

A: The question comes, what is your core-strength? Even when we talked about positioning ourselves, it was very clear that we could not position ourselves as the biggest, the eldest or the most global.

Q: It certainly cannot be based only on price?

A: Yes. When I look at great entrepreneurs, they have the ability to convert their weaknesses into strength. So, we made that into the strength.

Q: Was it easy to convince people to buy into your argument when you started off? Give us your examples or anecdotes of it.

A: Let me give you an example: we did a market survey in 1991 or 1992, to look at what was our reputation for employees. We were nowhere on the list. We said this is not going to succeed because tomorrow if all these big boys come and they go to recruit in the IIT or NIIT campus, why will anybody join us? They will go and join a big name. Therefore, we said one of the key strategic things we have to do is build a brand as a company that is very attractive to the workform. Within four years we were able to go from nowhere to the most wanted company to join in the campuses.

Part of that was, we invested in building a world-class campus. This was in 1992 or 16 years back. So, we raised capital, built a campus and invested in training, because we realised that people wanted to get educated and get better at things. We invested in a cool campus kind of culture.

Q: When you go from seven employees to 1,00,000 and from two business units to 6-12 units, is there a checklist on how you should actually go about managing?

A: The big change was driving backward instead of forward. In the Hindu rate of growth days, from 1981 to 1992, we used to do Rs 9 crore of revenue and then all huddle together. We did not have budgeting systems and that kind of stuff. We huddle together and asked what do we do next year? We said that next year we will do Rs 11 crore, about 20% of this year. That is the wrong model. Then we realised that the driving forward stuff doesn’t work. So, we said let’s drive backwards.

This means deciding a target and then working backward and figuring how to get there. That is the key switch in the model. That happened at the time of our IPO. We did our IPO in February 1993 and you have to put a three-year projection of revenue.

We put the projections saying that, we will be a Rs 50 crore company in three-years and then after that we started wondering how are we going to get to Rs 50 crore in three years. We opened and unlocked our imagination because then we realised that we have to do the following: we have to recruit more people, get the infrastructure, put more sales people on the ground, open more offices and build the brand.

Q: Infosys has always been seen as a conservative company but both you and Narayana Murthy have vehemently opposed this idea of Infosys being conservative. What is that judicious mix between taking risks and being conservative? Are there times when you should actually err on the side of caution?

A: It is more about being prepared than about being risk averse. I go around these circles where I meet other CEOs like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Mukesh Ambani. They share one extraordinary feature; they have the ability to visualize the big picture and go to extraordinary levels of detail.

That is required because you have to think big. Bill Gates said, “I want a PC on everybody’s desk”, and Mukesh Ambani wants to build a town bigger than Mumbai. But at the same time, they have the knack of getting into every little detail. They are not micromanagers, but they think through the details and have the ability to go from the picture to the detail and back to the big picture in milliseconds. So, this ability is required for all of us.

Entrepreneurial tips from Nilekani:

Puneet Puri, Director, Flying Films, asked, “One issue that I feel that an entrepreneur needs to learn is, how do you maintain a culture in the company? After you go beyond a particular size, would you lose direct contact with your subordinates when you have multiple layers of people between you and the last nodes? How do you ensure that your vision goes to them, as e-mails don’t work?

A: Obviously, there is one part of it, which is the execution stuff - the e-mails, chat sessions, discussion groups, communications and orientation programme. There is the whole infrastructure that you need to create that. But it is a lot about leadership by example because companies have a culture and their own mythologies and stories. They get reinforced by leadership behaviour. So, by walking the talk of what you say and practicing it in your business, it has a huge impact.

For example, one incident that you have with one employee in one part of the world can in today’s world resonate in the company for 24 hours. So, people get reinforced with that. The more they see that culture being practiced, it permeates into the system and has a huge impact.

Rakesh Shukla, Founder and CEO, The Writers Block, asked, “How do you keep the ego separate?

A: You have to decide where your ego gratification is going to come from. You can get your ego gratification from dominating the environment and having all the people saying yes or your ego satisfaction can come from creating a great company or from transforming an industry. It just depends on where you peg that satisfaction. So, if you can peg your satisfaction at the right level, then it won’t be an impediment at this level.

Q: (Rakesh Shukla) The question is not one of satisfaction; it is about how it is perceived to be. It should not be seen as satisfaction that I am deriving but rather for the good of the company as what is good for the company is good for all of us. But it shouldn’t be seen as my picture only.

A:  That is a very valid point. Let us say that when we were a USD 100 million company, we said we want to be a USD 1 billion company. It was not just about articulating that we want to be a USD 1 billion company. It was about painting a view of what a billion dollar company would look like in terms of revenues, customers, employees infrastructure, sales, service offerings and all that stuff and then making everybody in the company participate in that vision. That automatically makes all of them buy into that vision and it becomes everybody’s vision. This notion of defining the future is not only a way to unlock the aspiration and imagination of people, it is also a way to align everybody to the same grammar.

Q: Karan Gupta, Executive Director, Candico, asked, “So you set yourself a goal and recognize sources that you need to achieve that goal; whether it is a high-quality campus or employee surveys. This does not necessarily guarantee that revenues will follow. All you can guarantee is that you are putting resources in place. So, how do you meet that challenge?

 A:  It is not just about the capacity of the system to meet the goal. It is also about which markets, products and services are required to meet the goal and how many customers are required, how much revenue per customer and how many sales people are needed to reach the goal. It is both the supply side issue as well as a demand side issue. So, you plan the whole thing.

Q: Sunny Bhatia, CEO, Colour Kraft, asked, “For a company who has dealt with issues like land allotment, e-governance and entrepreneurs like us face corruption almost every day, how did you manage to deal with this issue with so much sincerity and honesty?

A: We are partly helped by the fact that our business and customers are international and we are not much dependent on the local ecosystem. But more importantly, it actually becomes an asset because people know that you don’t do that kind of a thing. So, they don’t even bother to ask you.

Actually somebody was doing a case study on this. So, it actually creates a wall because they say, ‘these guys are all crazy guys, they don’t do any of this stuff’.

Q: Jessie Paul, Chief Marketing Officer, Wipro, asked, “Narayana Murthy has often spoken about the triggers for becoming an entrepreneur.  So, when he came to you and said join Infosys, what made you quit your cushy job? Did you think it was like an adventure and you can go back? Did you see it as a lifetime commitment at that time?

A: For me, the risks were very low because I was only 25. The downside was not that much. But I did see it as something for life and not as a 5-year or a 10-year kind of a thing.

Q: Around 25 years ago, did you see it as a lifetime commitment?

A: I didn’t think I would work anywhere else.

Q: Why was that? What was it that he told you that made you buy into his story well before Infosys was a USD 4 billion company?

A: The opportunity to create something different, new, something which would be transformational and path breaking. That is exciting stuff.

Q: But what was the reaction from your peers and family because everybody was probably going abroad, getting a job in Silicon Valley after IIT Mumbai?

A: Aghast at the whole idea.

Q: Did you have to take a battle with them to convince them?

A: Yes, but I normally did the opposite of what my father told me, so this is one more of those things and no big deal.

Q: Hitesh Oberoi, COO & Director, Info Edge, asked, “This is something which has puzzled me and I have been thinking about it for a long time now. On the one hand you have business houses like Reliance ADAG and Tatas who are into 30 different businesses. They start a new business every six month or one-year and those businesses become very big. On the other hand, here is a group of professionals doing Infosys, completely focused on just one idea and making it very big. But in the process, there must have been lots of opportunities which you may have missed. You had the capital and the resources. You could have had the best professionals to do it for you. What do you think is the reason? Is it because of the fact that we are professionals and that is how you were brought up and while these guys are from seasoned business families and that is how they think and they think very differently?

A: There have been many professionals who have diversified. I don’t want to make it a professional versus a guy born in a business background. I just think that it was not our cup of tea. It was very clear to us. It is not that we didn’t try. We tried it and we tried to do manufacturing. We tried to make all kinds of gizmos but we were a complete failure and that completely turned us off that path in some sense. That was enough for us to blank out our mind to this diversification for 20 years.

There are enough cases today of professionals who have quickly diversified and it’s fine. May be it is just our incompetence and inability to manage multiple industries.

Q: Nikhil Velpanur, CEO, Lets Head To, asked, “I started my company at 19 years and have zero corporate experience. I have zero qualifications. So, how does a person like me go about now that my company is poised to grow rapidly? How do I go about building a team that has got people with phenomenal experience?”

A: First of all, you should make a ruthless analysis of your strengths and weaknesses and then find somebody who fills all your weaknesses or find a bunch of people and be willing to recognize that. Don’t try to be smartest in everything because we are not, but identify what you are good at and what you are not good at. Be ruthless about it and then cherry-pick people who can fix that and then build a team.

Q: But it is important to recognise you weaknesses?

A: Absolutely.