Shiv Nadar: A glance through India’s third-richest billionaire’s massive net worth, success and more

Shiv Nadar is a renowned businessman, best known as the founder and Chairman Emeritus of HCL Technologies, one of India’s largest software services companies. In 1976, he founded HCL in a garage with the aim of manufacturing calculators and microprocessors. Currently, HCL Technologies, with a revenue of $11.8 billion, is one of the leading software services providers in India.

Nadar is India’s third-richest person after Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani with a net worth of nearly $36 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Born in a Tamil Nadu village in 1945, Nadar had a rural upbringing before he pursued electrical engineering from Coimbatore and later worked as a management trainee at textile firm DCM in the 1960s.

He, along with his partners he met at DCM, started Hindustan Computers in 1976 with an investment of $20,000 and began selling micro-computers two years late following IBM’s exit from India.

In this article, let’s take a quick look at Shiv Nadar’s family, net worth, philanthropy and more.

HCL Corp, of which Nadar is a promoter, is the biggest shareholder of Indian IT giant HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems. Selling a 2.5% stake in HCL Technologies in 2010 to raise $125 million, Nadar donated the entire amount to the Shiv Nadar Foundation, which he had started in 1994. That year, he pledged to set aside more than 10% of his wealth toward philanthropy.

Shiv Nadar – Net worth

According to Forbes, Shiv Nadar’s net worth is estimated to be around $24.7 billion, making him one of the richest people in India and the world.

In the recently released list of richest Indians by Forbes, Nadar squares off the podium ranking third with just Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani ahead of him.

Business Career

Shiv Nadar started his career as a computer programmer at the Delhi-based DCM group of companies. In 1976, he founded HCL Technologies with a capital investment of Rs 1,87,000, which was a quite significant amount at that time.

Philanthropy

Shiv Nadar is a well-known philanthropist in India. He founded the Shiv Nadar Foundation in 1994, which focuses on education and rural development. The foundation runs several initiatives, including the VidyaGyan schools, which provide free education to underprivileged children in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh. He has also donated large sums of money to several charitable causes, including COVID-19 relief efforts in India.