Nandan Nilekani is back in action

BENGALURU: A year after losing his first Lok Sabha election, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani is back in action in the world of technology-end entrepreneurship, backing and mentoring early stage startups, and helping architect a new platform for mobile payments, among others.
Nilekani, who is also using his old government technology organization eGovernments Foundation to build a backbone technology platform for cities across the country, on Monday said he was backing a startup that is currently on 'stealth mode,' where he is playing the role of an anchor investor."I have an open-door policy for startups, so I have a lot of people who come and meet me," Nilekani told ET.
Nilekani, dressed in his trademark half-sleeve shirt and dark trousers, talked about Sunday's Wimbledon final where world number one Djokovic triumphed over Federer who Nilekani was rooting for.
"He (Federer) completely fell apart in the 3rd and 4th sets," Nilekani, 60, said, before getting into things that he's directly involved in.
"I spend about 2-4 hours a week meeting with various people," he said. "I have no financial interest in (these startups). For me it's also an education to understand how people are thinking, and they also like to come and bounce ideas off. I do that as a pro-bono service — it keeps me in the loop of what's happening."
Nilekani, who recently invested in aerospace startup Team Indus, intends to play an even more active role in mentoring startups in the near future and said he was 'impressed' with the energy and the ideas coming out of the ecosystem.
"First of all, it (the local startup ecosystem) is very high energy, with a lot of capable young people...willing to break conventions and try new things. (They are) globally savvy, they understand the latest trends. So, I'm very impressed," he said.
Nilekani also hinted that he may quit politics for good.
"For me politics was a means to an end. I wanted to accelerate the change that I felt India needed... And I felt that many of the suggestions that I was making were not moving because people did not have a tech background to understand the potential of those ideas," he said.
"So I thought that by being in the system I could get more done — but now I'm increasingly convinced that I can be effective by being outside the system. That's what I hope to be doing — from outside the system, making a difference. If I can be effective from outside, that's all that matters for me," he said.
Nilekani declined to confirm whether he was planning to leave Congress. "Right now I'm inactive. I'm still there, but I'm inactive. I don't want to say anything beyond that," he said. He confirmed something else though — that he was working with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), helping the retail payments organisation build an infrastructure for mobile payments called Unified Payments Interface, and that he was a mentor to iSpirt.
"The other area which I look at is speed and scale. Because both my Infosys experience — where we created a multi-billion dollar company — and with Aadhaar — where we've come close to enrolling a billion people on Aadhaar — I think I've lot of experience in scale at speed," said Nilekani.
He said the fact that the current BJP-led government retained the Aadhaar project was a huge validation for what they achieved through the platform. "I think the prime minister is very tech savvy and understands how technology can be used for governance.
So I think he was able to instantly grasp the strength of Aadhaar and they have actually supported it whole-heartedly and now it's been used for so many things. So I think the fact that it stood the tests of two governments is a good validation," he said.
In the course of the interview Nilekani said his upcoming book, co-authored by former UIDAI executive Viral B Shah, would focus on his experience of having worked on the Aadhaar project, which now has 880-million people on its platform.
"A lot of the book is about that experience and how to navigate this in the political system because it's not just about the technology, it's about convincing people, about building coalitions, about getting things done," he said.
"And then a part of the book is about applying this to other sectors — how can we leapfrog like this in health, is there a way to re-architect the way we deliver healthcare, is there a way to re-architect the way we think of cities, electricity, etc?" said Nilekani, who has previously authored Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation.
"Our view is that the government or entities like NPCI should build platforms and then innovation will happen on that," he said.
"So don't try to do everything yourself, it's difficult to innovate. But if you build a platform which allows other people to innovate — India is a country of a billion innovators — they can then use that. So it's about putting across those ideas," Nilekani signed off.
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