Vijay Thadani, Co-founder & CEO, NIIT shares notes on his leadership style

My first role model
Raji Pawar (Rajendra Pawar, Founder-Chairman of NIIT) has been my role model from the day I met him while we were students at IIT, Delhi

My first job
At NELCO, a company in transition from entertainment to industrial electronics

My first boss
K. Bhushan, who taught me that it is more difficult to lose an order than to win one

My first promotion
To product engineer, only to discover the huge chasm that exists between an R&D lab and a customer site

My first disappointment
Losing a large contract, despite being found the most suitable contender. It was due to 'extraneous' reasons

As told to Vivan Mehra