HCLTech Brand Guidelines: Hindustan Computers, a 1991 Spin-Off & Supercharging Progress

A computer maker, then a 1991 spin-off.

HCLTech’s roots are in Hindustan Computers Limited, an Indian maker of computers. English Wikipedia dates HCL to 1976 and names Shiv Nadar and seven other founders, all formerly of Delhi Cloth & General Mills (DCM). Mint, in a 2007 profile of the co-founder Arjun Malhotra, put the start in 1975 and described six friends behind it: Shiv Nadar, Ajai Chowdhry, D.S. Puri, Subhash Arora, Yogesh Vaidya and Malhotra himself. The two accounts differ on the year and the number, so both are given here. In 1978 HCL introduced the Micro 2200, which English Wikipedia describes as one of the earliest microcomputers designed and made in India.

The services business came later. On 12 November 1991, English Wikipedia says, HCL’s software and technology development work was spun off as a separate company, incorporated as HCL Overseas Limited. It was renamed HCL Consulting Limited in July 1994 and, on 6 October 1999, HCL Technologies Limited, a name the company said better reflected its activities. Hardware stayed with a sister company, HCL Infosystems, which English Wikipedia says stopped making HCL-branded personal computers in 2013.

HCL Technologies went public on 11 January 2000. Twenty-five years later, in January 2025, the company marked the anniversary with a bell-ringing ceremony at the National Stock Exchange in Mumbai, The Times of India reported, noting that it had employed fewer than 3,000 people in 2000 and more than 220,000 by then. It remains the flagship company of the HCL Group, English Wikipedia says.

Services, engineering and software.

Today HCLTech describes its work in three segments, according to English Wikipedia: IT and Business Services, Engineering and R&D Services, and HCLSoftware. Its headquarters are in Noida, in Uttar Pradesh, and English Wikipedia says it operates in about 60 countries, with the United States its largest market.

The service lines widened through the 1990s and 2000s. In 1993, English Wikipedia says, the young company began offering enterprise IT infrastructure management, starting with an order to set up an electronic trading system for India’s National Stock Exchange. Engineering work followed: in 2003 it won a contract to develop embedded software for the flight warning system of the Airbus A340 airliner, English Wikipedia says. By September 2026 the company had about 230,000 employees of 164 nationalities, according to the same article, spread across more than 200 delivery centres and some 70 labs.

The software segment grew out of a deal with IBM. At the end of June 2019, Mint reported, HCL Technologies confirmed it had closed its purchase of a group of IBM products for security, marketing, commerce and digital work, taking full ownership of their research, sales and support. The products included AppScan, BigFix, Unica and Notes Domino, the long-running email and collaboration software. At the same time the company formally introduced HCL Software as a new division to run that product business; it now trades as HCLSoftware.

Its corporate social responsibility work runs through HCLFoundation, which English Wikipedia describes as the company’s CSR arm in India, with programmes in education, the environment and sport. Its initiatives include the HCLTech Grant, a Sports for Change programme that has supported para athletes, and My E-Haat, which English Wikipedia says has worked with more than 5,000 craft artisans across ten Indian states. In sport the company has been the official digital technology partner of Cricket Australia since 2019, English Wikipedia says, and it is a partner of MetLife Stadium in the United States and of the DP World Tour in golf.

The HCL name still appears across the wider group, which English Wikipedia says now includes healthcare, education and, through a joint venture with Foxconn, semiconductor work.

How IT services firms present themselves.

IT services and consulting firms sell work that is hard to photograph: software, systems, advice and the people who deliver them. Their identities therefore lean on a small set of tools. Wordmarks are usually set in a confident sans-serif, often in capitals or as a short set of initials, and palettes tend to sit in blues and purples, from deep navy to bright violet, used across websites, reports and event stands.

Their websites follow a familiar structure. Industry pages address banks, insurers, retailers, manufacturers and public bodies one by one, while capability pages cover cloud, data, cybersecurity, AI and consulting. Client case studies carry much of the proof, usually naming the customer and describing a programme of work rather than a product, and many firms publish their own research reports, surveys and indices to show expertise and to be quoted in the business press.

Place matters too. Delivery centres and offices are often photographed as campuses, with landscaped grounds, glass buildings and training halls, and those images recur across annual reports, recruitment material and news coverage. Careers pages speak directly to graduates and early-career engineers, with training programmes, campus recruitment and employee stories, alongside pages for experienced hires and alumni.

The last layer is public commitment. Sustainability reports, community programmes, education initiatives and sponsorships of sport and culture give the brand a presence beyond the client meeting, and in the case of sponsorship can put a company name on a stadium, a team shirt or a city race. The guides that follow look at how each firm uses those tools, and where its own history shows through.

One word, and Supercharging Progress.

The current identity dates from 26 September 2022. That Monday, the Indian marketing journal afaqs! reported the next day, HCL Technologies launched a new brand identity and logo under the name HCLTech, built around the positioning “Supercharging Progress”. The company’s chairperson described the change as an evolution towards a distinct global brand identity while keeping its connection with the HCL Group, and the chief executive presented a new purpose statement about combining technology and people to supercharge progress for clients, employees, communities and the planet.

The launch came with more than a logo. afaqs! reported that HCLTech also introduced a new employee value proposition, “Find Your Spark,” built on opportunity, respect and trusted employment, and widened its community and volunteering programmes. English Wikipedia notes that the earlier HCL Technologies logo was used until 2022. The legal name did not change: the company is still HCL Technologies Limited, with HCLTech as the brand it trades under, English Wikipedia says.

For a design guide, HCLTech shows how a company can keep a group prefix while building a separate brand on top of it. Compare IBM, whose software products HCLTech took over in 2019, and Wipro, another Indian IT services firm with roots in a very different business. For this guide we use indigo, navy and a violet with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep HCLTech’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.