Indians Who Shaped Indian IT

Ajai Chowdhry: When HCL was founded in 1976, there were only 15 computers in all of India-so Chowdhry and his partners created the 'computer culture' in the country. Chowdhry took over the reins in 1994 and has successfully transitioned the company from a hardware-only focus to a premier technology integration company.

Ashok Jhunjhunwala: An authority in technology, telecommunications, computer networks and fibre optics.

Ashok Soota: In 1984, he became CEO of the Rs 7-crore Wipro Information Technology. The entrepreneurial bug caught him and he co-founded MindTree Consulting-an e-biz firm.

Azim Premji: He left college midway and came home from Stanford to take over his father's oils and pulses business on his death. He grew that into a more than Rs 3,000-crore IT business-among the best-known Indian IT brands abroad. What Premji is and will be remembered most for is his unceasing vision of Wipro as primarily a technology and IPR-driven company.

B Ramalinga Raju: Raju jumped into IT as a hobby, quickly realized its growth potential and built it into a Rs 1,700-crore giant. He started one of the first-if not the first-true outsourcing deal with Deere & Co in the US and set off a whole new phenomenon.

Chandrababu Naidu: Pramod Mahajan once said of Chandrababu Naidu —"he's the man who taught politicians that Powerpoint could mean something other than three holes in a wall socket”, truly believing in what technology can do for the country, for untiringly spreading that message and acting on it at the risk of political backlash.

Dewang Mehta: Dewang played a key role in putting the Indian IT sector on the world map. He deserves credit for the events that led to the I-T exemption for software exporters and software reproduction legislation, and excise & sales tax exemption from a numbers of state governments.

Dr Srinivasan Ramani: The man who helped create the first e-mail in the country. He and fellow scientists pioneered the Internet age in India through the Ernet-a network connecting the education and research institutions and conducted among the earliest experiments in satellite communications.

FC Kohli: Dr Fakir Chand Kohli, former deputy chairman of Tata Consultancy Services, was awarded the Padma Bhushan early this year, for his contribution to the software industry. He is often known as the 'Father of the Indian SW industry'. He is instrumental in building TCS and guiding it to its current standing.

Maj Gen A Balasubrahmanian AVSM (retd): This AVSM winner, with 34 years in the Indian Army, will be most remembered for being the founding secretary of the Computer Society of India. He also served as president of CSI from 1969 to 1972.

N Vittal: He took over as the secretary of the DoE in 1990 and changed the rules of the game. The software industry will remember him for the $400-million challenge. From there, he moved to DoT, where he is remembered for his privatization attempts.

Nandan Nilekani: He's been the quintessential road warrior. The man who always stood one step behind Narayana NR Murthy, ran the operations that no outsider ever got to see, ran the business, made that sale.

Prof HN Mahabala: One of the pioneers of Indian IT education, in 1965, Mahabala initiated the computer science program at IIT Kanpur-a first in India. He has taught over 25 courses in computer science and set up a national computer center at IIT Chennai.

NR Narayana Murthy: Few remember him now as the first designer of the 'Basic Interpreter' implemented in India. Or as the man who was part of a team that built the country's first multi-user OS. Which is as it should be. Murthy is listed here for creating a globally-respected Indian company, Infosys.

Pramod Bhasin: Arguably the most important man in the BPO space in India is Bhasin. GE has 20,000 employees working in back-end offices in India.

Pramod Mahajan: In Year 1999, Mahajan was given the task of heading the newly-created IT department. He helped the Indian IT sector strengthen its roots. Along with building a resurgent regional identity, he also pushed forward path-breaking legislation. The other key achievement by Mahajan was in bringing out the IT Act in 2000, making India the second country in the world to frame such an act. In 2006, Mahajan was shot by his brother.

Raman Roy: Regarded as the pioneer and "guru" of the IT-enabled services business out of India, having played a pivotal role in proving India as a locale for remote processing and has successfully delivered servicing solutions.

Rajendra S Pawar: Pawar co-founded NIIT along with batchmate Vijay Thadani and with support from Shiv Nadar. Pawar, a visionary and developer of HR potential, has played a role in instituting quality processes and Crosby's CDMS at NIIT.

Sam Pitroda: They called it the 'Great Technology Honeymoon'-his and Rajiv Gandhi's-that led to the setting up of the Center for the Development of Telematics in India and his appointment as Gandhi's technology adviser. He launched the Rural Automatic Exchanges (RAX) project, that brought the PCO revolution to India.

Sanjeev Bhikchandani: The pioneer in the Web-enabled recruitment business, this 39-year-old IIM Ahmedabad exponent founded naukri.com in 1997 before the dot-com wave hit Indian shores.

Shiv Nadar: 25 years ago, he formed HCL in a one-room tenement and pioneered the growth of IT in India in every sphere-hardware, software and networking communications. Also that, in the process of running HCL, he and his company would be become the incubators for India's leading IT professionals and entrepreneurs

S Ramadorai: Beginning his career with TCS as a programmer, Ramadorai rose through the ranks and was given the charge of setting up TCS' operations in the US in 1975. He began with New York and that network has since grown to over 50 offices throughout the country.

Sunil Bharti Mittal: Head of Bharti Group, whose flagship company Bharti Tele-Ventures is India's leading private sector provider of telecommunications services. Under his stewardship, not only has Touchtel become India's first private sector telephone service provider to cross the 300,000-mark, Bharti is also the first telecom firm to cross the 2-million mobile subscriber mark.

Vijay Bhatkar: As the then executive director of CDAC, he gave India's its first supercomputer-PARAM 8000-in 1991. And he did it in a record time of three years. Bhatkar went on to build PARAM 10000 in 1998, one of the world's largest supercomputers, propelling India into the group of elite five nations that possess this technology. He is also credited with nurturing the GIST multilingual technology which made possible the use and co-existence of all Indian languages along with English on standard computers. In 2000, the government awarded him the Padmashri.

Ajit Balakrishnan: Ajit Balakrishnan and friends launched Rediff.com which went on to become India's premier dotcom.

Hemant Sonawala: In 1966, even when he setup Hinditron focusing on instrumentation and electronic engineering, he realized the role computers would play in the future. Not surprising therefore that Hinditron tied up with Digital to bring minicomputers to India in the 70s, when it also started the country's first commercial CAD datacenter.Following IBM's exit, Digital was the first MNC to come into India via a Hinditron JV;

N Seshagiri: His key contributions were the conceptualization and implementation of NICNET (the first VSAT Network outside US with over 1,200 VSATs) and ERNET. While simultaneously holding positions in DoE, the Planning Commission and Ministry of IT since its formation, he drafted the first liberalized Computer Hardware Policy in 1984, and the first liberalized Software Development, Export and Training Policy in 1986.

R Chandrasekhar: The Father of Indian e-Gov, he was the man who established the first Deptt of IT in the country in Andhra Pradesh, and also heralded some of the most innovative and path-breaking efforts including the public-private partnership concept in

e-governance projects.

Kiran Karnik: Besides the commendable work done at ISRO and the Discovery Channel, Kiran has done commendable work in making Nasscom from a one-man crusade into a professionaly-run organization. Whether it was the anti-outsourcing wave in the US, the BPO data theft scandals, or the H1B visa issues, Nasscom responded to all issues effectively under the able guidance of Kiran.