VIRTUALLY every Saturday, Ajai Chowdhry, chairman and CEO of HCL  Infosystems and one of the six co-founders of India's oldest computer  company, HCL, spends a few hours listening to wannabe entrepreneurs. He  listens to their ideas, looks at their business models and considers  their pitches. Every once in a while, if he comes across an idea that  interests or excites him, he goes a step further. He, and a few other  senior executives like him, then ensure that that particular wannabe  entrepreneur can manage to make the transition to actual entrepreneur.
They help out with critical start-up funding. But much more than  money, they offer what these entrepreneurs really need and what they  cannot find in any business school or bank. They offer mentoring and  advice and the wisdom learnt through their experience of having walked  this path earlier, on their own.
History
It's hard work, and consumes a lot of what every busy chief executive  like Chowdhry is most short of — time. But he, and the dozens of other  successful businessmen who form the Indian Angel Network, know that this  is the critical difference between a dream staying on paper and the  dream turning into reality.
Ajai Chowdhry should know that better than most. In 1976, his  colleague in the Delhi Cloth Mills ( DCM), Shiv Nadar, had talked him,  and four other colleagues and friends, into quitting DCM and starting  their own computer company. Hindustan Computers Limited, as it was then  known, managed to ship its first home designed, home- built  microcomputer in 1978. Around the same time that a Syrian-American  college drop-out called Steve Jobs had shipped his first microcomputer —  the Macintosh.
This was the predecessor of the PC. But IBM was to lay claim to that  term, and make it its own, a full three years later, when it managed to  roll out its first desktop PC. IBM, of course, took a different route to  becoming the world's largest technology company. And Jobs took Apple on  a different journey altogether, making it arguably the world's most  inventive technology company, and eventually the world's most valuable  one. Period.
But what of HCL? Just imagine. Thirty six years ago, all three  companies were virtually at the same point in the industry's lifecycle.  Apple and HCL, in fact, were so similar, they could have been twins.  Jobs started Apple in a garage.
Nadar, Chowdhry and their friends started their company in a south  Delhi ' barsati'. Apple took an off- the- shelf microprocessor and built  a computer around it. And then developed the software to make it run.  HCL took an off- the- shelf microprocessor and built a computer around  it. And then wrote the software to make it run. At virtually the same  time.
Nearly four decades later, the picture has changed dramatically.  Today, HCL is admittedly a very successful company. It has revenues in  excess of $ 6 billion and is among the top five players in the country  in all the sectors that it operates in.