Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani is one of the most recognised personalities in the Indian business space. He is Narayana Murthy’s business partner who helped him to found one of India’s most valuable tech companies Infosys.
In a recent episode of Nikhil Kamath's podcast "People by WTF," Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, revealed how he met his wife, Rohini Nilekani. The billionaire recalled the time when he met Rohini, which happened during a college quiz contest in 1977. Elphinstone College's Rohini was his opponent, while he was representing IIT Bombay. Although Nandan won the quiz, he lost his heart to Rohini. After a series of interactions, they fell in love and dated each other for some time before tying the marital knot.
Nilekani also added that Rohini is the more “spontaneous, emotional and mercurial” of the two of them, while he was the more “sedate, boring type”. He agreed that Rohini believes in expressing her thoughts. “Environment is a big theme for her, part of her philanthropy. She is probably the biggest environmental philanthropist in India,” said Nilekani.
Despite not being heavily involved in environmental philanthropy, the Infosys co-founder stated that he still believes in it. "I wholeheartedly support her actions," he declared.
In addition to co-founding and serving as director of the nonprofit education platform EkStep, Rohini Nilekani is the chairperson of the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. In addition, she started Arghyam, a national initiative for sustainable water and sanitation.
She has served on the audit advisory board of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India and the Eminent Persons Advisory Group of the Competition Commission of India. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the environmental think tank Atree.
Rohini Nilekani, apart from being a philanthropist, was a former journalist and an author.
She, along with husband Nandan Nilekani, had signed the Giving Pledge in 2017 that commits half of their wealth to philanthropic causes. “We believe that there is a huge opportunity to open up that question creatively and collaboratively. No matter who we are, how we have generated our wealth or what ideologies we espouse, we all face the same situation: our desire to give forward is collectively growing, but our ability to create sustainable change is just not keeping pace. We have the resources, the vision, and the skills to create large-scale market institutions. Yet, when it comes to social change, we learn it is tougher. Something eludes us. Things do succeed, but not fast enough or with sufficient impact. We feel good about trying, but we despair at emerging challenges,” wrote the duo in the Giving Pledge letter.
