The Biz of Coding

HCL Celebrates 30th Birthday

by Ujwal Tickoo on August 14th, 2006

HCL, one of India’s leading Information Technology Companies (along with Infosys, WIPRO, TCS, and Satyam Computers) is celebrating its 30th birthday. Started in 1976 by 6 people, HCL began with distributing Toshiba copiers in India and followed up with building micro-computers for the Indian market. HCL PCs are still one of the biggest selling Branded PCs in the Indian market.

HCL Enterprise comprises of two listed companies in India HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems. HCL Enteprise has an annual revenue of US $ 3.3 billion.

HCL’s founder Shiv Nadar is considered a leading business person in India. Shiv Nadar besides being listed in Forbes amongst world’s 500 richest people has a deep committment to building an education infrastructure in India. His SSN School of Advanced Software Engineering (SSNSASE) runs a Masters program in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University.

Business Model

In the Global market HCL focuses on services related to:

• Product Engineering and Technology Development
• Application Development
• Infrastrucure Projects and
• BPO

In the Indian Market HCL focues on:

• IT Hardware
• IT Services
• Networking & Network Integration
• Retail and Distribution of Telecom & Imaging Products

HCL provides after sales and support for Apple iPods in India and has other major alliances with Tech Majors like Microsoft, HP, Nokia, AMD etc. Last year HCL launched the sub 10,000 Rupee PC (around US $ 200) — a need very specific to markets in Developing countries like India. HCL’s history can be seen here. 

POSTED IN: India