Bengaluru: The story of Nagarro cofounder Manas Human spans an unlikely arc — from the tea town of Dibrugarh in Assam and the classrooms of Delhi to the trading floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, where he helped build one of the world’s largest digital engineering companies. Born in Dibrugarh, Human spent part of his childhood in Iraq before moving to Delhi as a teenager. He went on to earn a PhD in supply chain management from IIT Delhi and an MS in manufacturing systems engineering from Stanford University, where he received a fellowship from the Stanford Institute of Manufacturing and Automation.In the 1990s, while in California, Human was fascinated by the world of software. “Everybody spoke the same language. Everybody spoke the language of code,” he recalled. That belief eventually led him and a group of entrepreneurs to combine two small firms in a modest first-floor office and create a new company called Nagarro. The name itself came by chance. Looking for an available internet domain, the founders stumbled upon the word “Nagarro” in a novel by author Robert Ludlum. The book described it as “spirits emerging and spirits coming together.”“We thought it was a real word. Later we found out that it wasn’t. We just liked the idea, took the URL, and that has been our flag for 30 years now,” Human said. The early years were slow and painstaking. It took Nagarro five years to reach $1 million in annual revenue, 10 years to get to $5 million, 15 years to reach $20 million and two decades to cross $150 million.Then came the inflection point. In the following seven years, Nagarro’s revenue surged to nearly $1 billion, making it one of the fastest-growing digital engineering companies globally. The company historically operated under German IT services group Allgeier before being spun off and listed independently in Dec 2020. “We wanted to build the best engineering outcomes for our clients and work with the world’s best companies,” Human said. “Because we spent all that effort, we were able to ride that growth when the digital revolution took off. We designed around lean, small teams and highly skilled people, not staffing pyramids.” That philosophy remained intact as Nagarro scaled, with the company continuing to operate through decentralised “two-pizza” teams and a non-hierarchical structure that preserved its startup culture.Today, as Persistent Systems seeks to acquire Nagarro in a $1.3-billion transaction, Human says the timing reflects the next shift in technology. Explaining why Nagarro agreed to the sale, he said Germany’s corporate culture takes a broader view than simply maximising price. “It’s not only about the price. It’s also about what is right for the future of the company, what’s right for employees, and what’s right for shareholders,” he said. Human also has significant skin in the game. He owns a 6.2% stake in Nagarro and, together with other senior executives who collectively hold another 6%, the management team controls roughly 12% of the company.Human’s own story, however, extends beyond technology and business. In 2022, at the age of 50, he changed his surname from Fuloria to Human. In a deeply personal essay published on Germany’s Unity Day on LinkedIn, he wrote that identities rooted in caste, religion, nationality and ethnicity were increasingly driving conflict and polarisation across the world. The name change, he said, was a symbolic attempt to affirm a simple belief, “Whatever other identities I may have, I am human first.” As for the next chapter, Human has little doubt about his role. “The most important thing is not roles or titles. The most important thing is that the baby that you have grown reaches great heights,” he said. “I am very much here.”
