HCL hasnt always been a group. Since 1976, when Shiv Nadar, Ajai Chowdhry and four colleagues founded it as Microcomp and then renamed it HCL, it was one company (the first tech company to set up in Noida, UP) selling systems in the domestic market, becoming the largest IT company in India in the 1980s.

Then in 1981, Shiv Nadar seeded NIIT, and for a few years DQ included that as part of the HCL group (Nadar has since divested his stake in NIIT). In 1991, HP invested 26% in a JV with HCL. The HCL-HP partnership ended in 1996, and HCL split into HCL Infosystems (HCLI) and HCL Technologies (HCLT), the latter to tackle the services exports business where the big three had already become the big three.

In the early 2000s, it was pretty much each company going its own way. HCLI sold systems and other hardware and also services in India and a few other geographies. HCLT exported services to other parts of the world. The next decision, circa 2005, was to bring them together into one HCL identity, with common branding and name-cards, even though the two remained separately listed on the markets. The subsequent marcom focused on "one HCL", a multi-billion-dollar group in diverse areas.

Last August, HCL turned 30. It celebrated the anniversary in style: launching an ad campaign on HCLs involvement in such areas as automotive, aerospace, and high-value financial services. Even as Infosys talked about growth and reliability, TCS about certainty, and Wipro about applying innovation, HCL decided to show off its attitude, and its courage and guts.

You do not normally expect a 30-year old company to talk about courage and guts in its ad campaign. You expect that from start-ups. But then, HCL has, frequently, been a challenger of status quo, a rebel.

For better or worse, HCL has tended to not do what everyone else is doing, often staking the fortune of the group on that. Sometimes, it has succeeded. Sometimes, it has burnt its fingers.

Take, for instance, how it handled the Y2K opportunity. It was no doubt a low-value, fixing job. But Indian services companies used the opportunity not just to make money but to also build a reputation for flawless execution. HCLs refusal to do so meant that now, even as a group, it remains behind Infosys, Wipro, and Satyamnot to mention TCS.

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