In the push of Swadeshi technology or building sovereign AI in India, most attention currently is going towards consumer tech brands like Zoho or MapmyIndia. But behind the scenes, a quieter revolution is taking place in enterprise software, ever since 1976, led by companies like HCLSoftware.
The difference is subtle but critical. While consumer tech plays in apps and platforms, HCLSoftware is focused on sovereign digital infrastructure—software that governments, banks, and global enterprises can control, secure, and deploy exactly where they want.
Kalyan Kumar, chief product officer at HCLSoftware, breaks sovereignty down into four pillars: data, intellectual property, AI, and commercial.
HCL, or Hindustan Computer Limited, is the original Indian garage startup, founded by Shiv Nadar and five others, at a time when India was a closed, near-socialist economy under Emergency. Building a tech company then was almost impossible.
For its first twenty years, HCL was purely a product company. Then it evolved — first into engineering services, then remote infrastructure management, and eventually into the IT services giant that HCL Technologies is today.
Over decades, it evolved from products to services, and now back to IP-centric software, operating in 132 countries with a $1.4 billion-plus public revenue footprint.
What is Sovereignty for HCL?
Given the current push by the government and Indian builders about Make in India, Kumar said data sovereignty is the most talked-about—especially in India, where new regulations like the DPDP have banks reconsidering how and where they host sensitive information. “We had one of the largest banks in India move its customer data platform from the cloud to on-premises,” Kumar said, while talking about State Bank of India.
“Another bank did the reverse—kept customer data on-prem, but ran campaign execution on the cloud. Sovereignty is ultimately about choice,” he said.
Choice is the word Kumar repeats most when discussing enterprise software.
Unlike others, HCLSoftware doesn’t just sell products—it gives customers flexibility in how they operate them. Its HCL Domino platform, for example, is a “sovereign email” solution used by over 8,000 customers globally. It can run entirely on private infrastructure, with private encryption, and even without a traditional email address—a level of control most consumer applications can’t offer.
Similarly, its IT management and security software can be deployed on-premises, in a customer’s cloud of choice, or in hybrid setups.
For Kumar, IP sovereignty is just as crucial. “Make in India has historically been about manufacturing dabbas and red boxes. But real sovereignty comes from building intellectual property,” he said. HCLSoftware has taken this seriously, carving out organic IP into focused divisions, acquiring companies to accelerate access to patents, and registering most of its IP in India even while tapping global engineering talent.
“We are India-headquartered, India-IP owned, but global in scale. We have teams in Tel Aviv, Rome, Austin, and Manila, but the core of what we build is registered here,” he explained.
HCLSoftware operates as an independent brand under HCLTech. But Kumar’s focus isn’t on size. It’s on building what he calls the next big shift in enterprise software — agentic software.
The Agentic Truth
AI sovereignty is emerging as the next frontier as building our own foundation models, our own GPUs, our own stack gains priority. But while startups and institutes race to train the next Indic LLM, HCLSoftware is already building the invisible plumbing that will make all of it actually usable.
Recently, HCL updated its Domino platform to its 14.5 version, specifically for AI. It now hosts an offline LLM engine that can embed small language models into products or connect to private AI infrastructure. “They [companies] don’t want their data or models to leave their infrastructure,” he said.
The company’s AI stack can run compressed language models inside a customer’s data centre or connect to private AI environments. It’s enterprise-grade AI that doesn’t need OpenAI, Anthropic, or Gemini to function.
Kumar stressed that India’s linguistic diversity requires highly localised models, tuned for dozens of dialects even within a single state. He argues that sovereignty isn’t about rejecting foreign technology; it’s about control and choice.
Traditionally, enterprises buy functionality from software vendors and capability from services companies, then struggle to stitch the two together. With agentic AI, Kumar says that gap disappears with new roles, giving the example of Palantir and OpenAI’s forward deployed engineers.
“We use the term F1 engineers— a feature of one engineer,” he explained. “It’s the ability to make a product fit for a specific customer by engineering extensions.”
It’s a model that blends AI with customisation at scale — a move that makes enterprise software more outcome-driven and less about one-size-fits-all licensing. “When you own your underlying stack, you can drive new business models faster,” Kumar said.
That stack, in HCLSoftware’s case, is entirely Indian-owned but globally built. “We are an India-headquartered, India-IP-owned global software product business,” Kumar said. “HCL is listed on the Indian stock market, the holding company is registered in Nehru Place, Delhi.”
No Slogans
He adds, “We’re the only UP-headquartered global software product company — based in Noida, and we’re proud of that.”
“You can’t say you only want technology built inside India. It’s about how you use it. Some departments need on-prem solutions, some can leverage the cloud. Sovereignty is giving them that flexibility,” Kumar said.
This approach sets HCLSoftware apart from consumer-focused “Make in India” success stories. While Zoho builds SaaS products for SMBs, HCLSoftware targets large enterprises, governments, and managed service providers. Its software powers everything from customer experience platforms to IT operations, cyber security, and compliance at scale.
Many deployments are global: banks, oil companies, and schools across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa rely on HCLSoftware’s sovereign options.
Yet even with these capabilities, HCLSoftware remains understated. The company doesn’t actively seek headlines for its “sovereign” credentials. “Our name stands for it,” Kumar said.
The post When India Talks Swadeshi, It Forgets This Hindustani Company appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.
