Ode to a Humble Programmer

In the recent years, one name has often come up as a contender for the

Dataquest IT Person of the Year award: that of the Indian Software Programmer.

What the jury members have not been able to agree on is whether it is time yet

to give the award to a nameless winner; but few have disputed the contribution

made by him per se. This ever-increasing tribe has not only impacted the economy

of the country significantly, it has changed the collective psyche of the Indian

nationit has made us realize our potential; it has made us change our

decades-old belief that our large population is a liability, not an asset. But

most important of all, it has changed the way the world looked at Indiaa nation

of snake charmers and mystics, which occasionally supplied some blue-collar

workers. Today, if you are an Indian in any major city of the world, you are

first asked if you are a computer programmer.

By unanimously deciding on Lakshmi Narayanan, the vice chairman and ex-CEO of

Cognizant as the winner of the Dataquest IT Person of the Year award for 2008,

the Dataquest jury panel, headed by last years winner Ajai K Chowdhry, has not

just acknowledged his personal contribution to the development of Indian IT but

has also recognized the contribution made by thousands of techies who have

smoothly evolved into leaders; have built and nurtured hundreds of

relationships, created employment opportunities for thousands, while creating

billions of dollars in shareholder wealth. Narayanan, who shares his first name

with his wife, is an epitome of that humble programmer who smoothly transformed

himself to the role of the largest project man, before playing a strategist,

an institution builder, and a leader, while establishing his credential as a

visionary. And he has done that by working in just two companiesprobably

providing at least one cue to the techies who want to be leaders, on what could

work!

Those two companies of course are extraordinary companies. One of themTCSdefined

the offshoring phenomenon, and established rules, which hundreds of

firmsentrepreneurial as well as established oneshave followed since then. The

otherCognizantwhich Narayanan helped build from day one, redefined some of

those rules, busting the myth that you have to be headquartered and listed in

India to be on top of the offshoring game. Cognizant is a case study of how to

build true global companies from scratch while still being on top when it comes

to business metrics such as growth and profitability.

The Formative Years



Coming from a family of engineershis father was an electronics engineer in

Hindustan Aeronautics and his elder brother too is an engineertechnology ran in

young Narayanans blood, even though like many Indian mothers in the 70s, his

mother wanted him to be a doctor or a civil servant.

Narayanan graduated from the Bangalore University in 1974. Armed with an MSc

degree in Electronics, he pursued his MBA at the IISC Department of Industrial

Management. In 1976 he joined TCS as a management trainee with a salary of Rs

950, an impressive figure those days, even if not a princely sum. Even though I

could not answer a question about the relationship between inflation and

interest rate, I was selected in TCS, he quips, his face brightening up with

nostalgia. Narayanan reserves all the positive superlatives for his first

employer, even though it is a top competitor for his present company.

TCS is where his career blossomed. He not just remembers all the major

projects that he worked on, he points out meticulously what he learnt from each

of them. One of the first projects was with Taj Hotel, for which TCS was

assigned to develop a payroll system. Pastries and biscuits used to be a major

attraction when we worked in the hotel, Narayanan says with a smile. Even in

those days, it was a complete collaborative culture, something that people are

talking about today, he adds on a more serious note.

TCS had just about 400 people those days and the reporting structure was so

flat that any delays in the execution of the project would come to the notice of

FC Kohli, the founding head of TCS.

The second major project he did at TCS was for Bennett & Coleman for the

automation of their classified advertising system. A major learning came in the

next big project for UTI. The warrants that the company was printing for sending

to its unit holders had some mistakes in certain cases. Some of those who got

those warrants happened to be Members of Parliament and the issue was raised in

the Parliament. Narayanan remembers his meeting with Tata Sons big honchos and

UTI chairman on the issue. But at the end of the day, they could come out of the

crisis.

Going back in time he gives the flavor of how codes were written in the

1970s. There were no terminals those days, we used coding sheets that went to

various places and got punched and came back. Writing a simple program could

take days.

The big break for Narayanan came in 1977, when he went to the US to do a

project with General Motors spark plug division. He held various capacities in

TCS in the US for about eighteen months and established his credentials as a

skilled programmer. He even got praise from one of the CEOs of the Tata facility

who referred to him as a bright young man with all the gods in his name.

The late 1970s were times when whoever went to the US stayed put. But Lakshmi

chose to remain in TCS and came back to Mumbai and played various roles. He

became a project manager and supervised the computerization of one of Indias

largest trust fund during 1979-80. In 1983 he became the program manager at TCS

and executed large IT deployments in the BFS space in the UK. In 1989, Lakshmi

went to Switzerland and was instrumental in setting up TCS operations there.

This is the time when he convinced both Swissair and his bosses at TCS to get

Swissairs back-office operations to India through a joint venture, AFS, which

later merged with TCS. This was Indias first BPO, almost at the same time as

Amex and much before British Airways and GE. Narayanan has never been credited

with bringing BPO to India. For him, he did not see it as a potentially big wave

but was convinced that it was a great proposition. Probably, like Columbus, he

himself did not know for a long time, the far-reaching impact of his pioneering

effort.

By that time, he had built his reputation as (in his own words, labeled as)

a largest project man. So, when Narayanan then came back to India, he was given

the charge of Tata Steel project. In 1993 he became TCS head of North Indian

operations based out of Delhi.

Clearly TCS was the springboard to his career where he got both technology

and managerial exposure. He travelled across Europe and understood the onsite

dynamics and client requirements. His biggest strength according to him is the

ability to design the project frameworks, which is critical to successful

deployments. The exposure at TCS gave him the ability to understand complicated

computing problems in the financial sector and gave him the deep domain

expertise. In 1994 when Narayanan was leading a contended life in Delhi, he got

an offer From Dun and Bradstreet Satyam Software, which later became Cognizant.

Initially Narayanan was reluctant to take the offer. But one of the former

directors of Tata who had left the group persuaded him to take the offer. So in

1994 Lakshmi Narayanans 18 years of career at TCS came to an end and he joined

Cognizant.

Moving Forward



Lakshmi Narayanans technical excellence made him become the CTO at Cognizant.
Few CTOs have effortlessly moved to the role of CEO. While he was comfortable

with technology, he was equally comfortable with handling relationships and

large operations.

The challenge, hence, was not really running an organization, but to build it

in a fundamentally different way that would give better value to the customers

and need we say, investors?

The fundamental challenge Lakshmi faced at Cognizant was to establish it as a

dependable IT company because Cognizant had to be built from scratch. That was

both a challenge and opportunity. Narayanan and his predecessor Kumar Mahadeva

decided that they could not afford to become another me-too.

Analysts still struggle to label Cognizant. It is the only large

offshore-centric company that is not headquartered in India. While some club it

with the likes of Infosys and TCS (as in SWITCH meaning Satyam Wipro Infosys TCS

Cognizant and HCL), some label it as an American company. Headquartered and

listed in the US, most of its employees are based in India.

The American company tag associated with us is a perception, while there is

nothing wrong in being called an American company, we consider ourselves as a

global company, says Narayanan. The companys first CEO was based in India, the

second in the US, the third (Narayanan) in India and the current one is in the

US.

The biggest challenge for Lakshmi at Cognizant was to deliver customer

expectations of its US clients through its offshore development facilities in

India. Scaling up the company in terms of human resources, technology expertise

and creating state-of-the-art delivery centers which became the driver for the

companys growth, and Lakshmi did these tasks with great expertise. Under his

leadership, Cognizant created a client-centric global delivery model. He took

the company through the Y2K phenomenon and charted the course post that with

various IT transformation projects that Cognizant took. Cognizant also became

the fastest company to achieve the $1 bn mark and it is also the first offshore

IT services company to be inducted in the NASDAQ 100. Cognizant also made it to

the S&P 500 index and became the Fortune 1000 company.

From a humble programmer at TCS to vice chairman at Cognizant, Lakshmi

Narayanan has come a long way. At TCS, despite donning specific roles, his

technical excellence acted as a proof-point of excellence and in a way

epitomized the Indian talent in the IT space. His role in Cognizant brought to

fore his skills in creating a company from scratch and making it into a

successful enterprise. In 2007, he became the chairman of Nasscom and here he

played a key role in bridging the gap between the industry and academia and

worked towards forging closer ties between them.

His tenure as Nasscom chairman also saw the body taking initiatives such as

highlighting SMB achievements in IT as well as taking initiative as data

security council.

Despite all his achievements, Narayanan is humble, unassuming and simple. His

humility and simplicity often hide that he is the same man who has been part of

writing the early success story of Indian IT Inc, and a man who has helped his

company grow three times in just three years as CEO, while trebling the market

cap as well, during that period.

His is a story of what difference a techie can make; what difference an

employee can make; and what difference a seemingly simple and straightforward

man can make.

Shyamanuja Das and Shrikanth G



shyamanujad@cybermedia.co.in