'Left nice corner office for...': Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani shares how he entered govt job in 2009

Tech titan Nandan Nilekani, who is widely regarded as the chief architect of Aadhaar, recently shared how he got an opportunity to work in the government. Nilekani is the co-founder of Infosys, the country's second-largest tech services company, and served as its CEO from 2002 to April 2007. He was brought in by the central government for creating a unique identification card for people.

Talking about this, Nilekani recently said that he got an opportunity in 2009 to serve in the government. "I was always inspired by business leaders who moved on to do public service, so I thought I should do the same. The project was to give every Indian a unique ID - but since we were involved, we said let's make it a digital unique ID. So that was the twist," the tech honcho told Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner at GSV Ventures, in a fireside chat at the GSV+Emeritus India Summit a month ago.

WATCH: Rs 3.2 lakh crore: The hidden treasure the govt can tap into if it cuts stakes in PSUs

Nilekani then described the stark contrast between a government and a corporate office. "I gave up a nice corner office overlooking a golf course with a few hundred thousand employees and it was a good life," he said, adding that he chucked that up to do a start-up inside the government. He also said that if anything was more difficult in a startup was a start-up inside the government.

"I did not have an office, I had a small table and a motley crew of people who all had the same vision. But we were able to pull it off. I served in the government for five years and we issued 600 million digital IDs," Nilekani said while describing the first few years of the Aadhaar rollout.

Watch: Sudha Murty: Interesting anecdotes from life of Padma Bhushan awardee and Infosys Foundation's co-founder

"Then the government changed and the new government came, I met Prime Minister Modi. He was always a big believer in technology. So today, 1.3 billion people have an ID. It (Aadhaar) does about 80 million transactions a day in terms of authentications, maybe five to seven million KYCs a day," the tech leader said. Nileknai said Prime Minister Modi slid the foundation for many other things all of which layer by layer have become what's called the India stack.

When Quazzo asked him about his books and specifically mentioned his first book Imagining India, Nilekani said he got the job because of that book. "That's how I got my job in the government. I'm the only guy - I got a job because I wrote a book," he said. His 'Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation' was published in 2008 and a year later he was offered a job in the government.

Watch #BTVisualStory | World Health Day 2023: Theme, history, significance and all you need to know

Nilekani's book presents a comprehensive analysis of the economic and social challenges faced by India since its independence in 1947. The book is divided into three parts and covers a wide range of topics, including education, infrastructure, healthcare, governance, and technology.