Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)
Inaugural Session: Dream Big, Do Bigger
Nandan Nilekani is the Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) with the rank of Union Cabinet Minister. UIDAI aims to provide a unique identification number for all residents of India.
He was most recently, Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Infosys Technologies Ltd., which he co-founded in 1981 and served as Director upto July '09.He has held various posts at Infosys, including Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, President, and Chief Operating Officer.
A Bachelor in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Bombay, Nilekani co-founded India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) as well as the Bangalore chapter of the IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE). He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) and the President of NCEAR, the premier, independent, applied economics research Institute in India.
He was named the Corporate Citizen of the Year at the Asia Business Leaders Award (2004) organized by CNBC. In 2005, he received the prestigious Joseph Schumpeter Prize for innovative services in economy, economic sciences and politics.
In 2006, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, named Businessman of the Year by Forbes Asia and listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was on the Time list again in 2009. Nilekani is the author of 'Imagining India', which was one of the finalists for the FT-Goldman Sachs Book Award for the year 2009.