Pyyan / People / Nandan Nilekani
Public intellectuals & authors
Nandan Nilekani
Built India's digital public infrastructure; now argues AI should be built the same way.
b. 1955🇮🇳IndiaCo-founder; Chairman, InfosysCo-founder, EkStep Foundation
Co-founded Infosys, then chaired the Aadhaar project and the UPI payments rail. His case that AI should be public infrastructure rather than a private frontier is the loudest counter-argument to the American lab model.
Known for
AadhaarUPIIndia Stack
3 CareerEvery role we can document, most recent first
- 2015–now11 yrsEkStep FoundationCo-founder
- 1981–now45 yrsInfosysCo-founder; Chairman
- 2009–20145 yrsUIDAI (Aadhaar)Founding Chairman
3 Books & papersPublished work, oldest first
- 2008Imagining India
- 2015Rebooting India
- 2022The Art of Bitfulness
LineageWho taught whom. Most of this field descends from a handful of laboratories, and the shortest path between two researchers is usually an advisor.
Worked alongsideco-founders and close collaborators
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Erik BrynjolfssonPortrait, CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Roles and dates are drawn from public professional records. Where a current role is listed, it reflects the most recent information available and may have changed.