F.C. Kohli, L.S. Kanodia & N. Patni are pioneers of Indian software services export industry

Last updated on 6-May-2017

An enjoyable short article by Shashi Tharoor, How being Indian became cool, http://www.theweek.in/columns/shashi-tharoor/how-being-indian-became-cool.html, May 2017

Some thoughts of mine and some more info. on this topic:
It is quite extraordinary how a single field of Information Technology (IT) propelled India from what was viewed as a basket-case economy on the road to self-destruction, to economic boom for the country as a whole!

In India, we now have union (federal) minister for IT, and at state level, ministers for IT too. That itself shows how vital, from economic point of view, the field of IT has been for India over the past few decades.
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In my considered view, it was well educated technologist businessmen/top-manager entrepreneurship in the field of software services that powered India's IT economic boom story, and not Indian computer scientists.

As I browsed a little on this topic, I came across this book reference, Making IT: The Rise of Asia in High Tech by  Henry S. Rowen (Editor), Marguerite Gong Hancock (Editor), & 1 more, https://www.amazon.com/Making-Rise-Asia-High-Tech/dp/0804753857, perhaps published in 2006. This book seems to be associated with Stanford project on regions of innovation and entrepreneurship. Its Google Books preview, https://books.google.co.in/books?id=NJeweiW-3jsC&pg=PA230&lpg=PA230&dq=L.S.+Kanodia&source=bl&ots=oASz3PlZsH&sig=MmOKuXlRjMMgspmJXIbVJ--RTW0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTofCrlNXTAhVKro8KHaQMDUUQ6AEINjAH#v=onepage&q=L.S.%20Kanodia&f=false, shows a list of leading Indian IT companies in 1990 and in 2002. See pic shown below:

Datamatics is listed in 1990 as no. 4 but does not appear in the 2002 list!

Some more info. about 1990 time well educated technologist businessmen/top-manager pioneers in India's IT economic boom (not necessarily in order of importance) is given below:

*) Faqir Chand Kohli (Tata Consultancy Services), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._C._Kohli, "He is frequently referred to as the Father of the Indian Software Industry due to his significant contribution in Indian IT industry. He was the founder and first CEO of Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software consultancy company." ... "After getting the scholarship he went to Queen's University, Canada and completed his BSc (Hons) in Electrical Engineering in 1948. He then worked for a year at the Canadian General Electric Company and subsequently did his MS in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1950."
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*) Lalit S. Kanodia. [Readers will have to excuse my bias here as the company he founded on his own, Datamatics, was the first company I joined in my software career, as a programmer-trainee with a 3 year bond, in 1984. It is my alma-mater, in a sense, as I was taught programming and system analysis there during a four month intensive training period. I quit the company in 1990. I have had a few personal interactions with Dr Lalit Kanodia though I was a relatively junior guy in the setup.] From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalit_Surajmal_Kanodia:

Dr. Lalit Kanodia (born March 30, 1941) is an active Indian Business Entrepreneur. He is credited with having created the Software Industry of India as the Founder CEO of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), earlier called Tata Computer Center during 1967-1970. He is currently Chairman of Datamatics Group of Companies which he founded in 1975. He also holds the position of National President of the Indo - American Chamber of Commerce and Vice President of the Indian Merchants Chamber, both prestigious organizations of the Indian business community. He has also served as President of the Management Consultants Association of India.
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Lalit studied Science in Elphinstone College, Bombay University for 2 years. He was then admitted to IIT, Bombay, where he studied Mechanical Engineering. After graduating in 1963, Lalit secured admission to MIT, Cambridge, MA and completed his MS in Management in 1965 with the highest grade in the graduating class. He was awarded the Ford Foundation Fellowship while at MIT. He returned to MIT in 1966 for his PhD in management, which he completed in 1967. Lalit was a member of the Project MAC at MIT that built Compatible Time-Sharing System and MULTICS (the first two multi-user computer operating systems & pre-cursors to UNIX).
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In 1965, Mr. JRD Tata, the then Chairman of Tata Group was contemplating to start a software company. He chanced upon the CV of Lalit Kanodia and asked him to study the feasibility of computerization within the Tata Group. Lalit wrote three Papers for the Tata Group which led to automation of the Load Dispatch System of the Tata Electric Companies by Westinghouse, Computerization of the electricity billing system of the company and formation of a software development center. Lalit then returned to MIT for his Doctorate. While there, he was chased and coaxed to return to India to form and head the software development center for the Tata Group. Lalit formed the Company in 1967 as Tata Computer Center, christened later as Tata Consultancy Services in 1968.

[Ravi: As Kanodia quit TCS and took some people of TCS with him to form his own company, Datamatics, I don't think official TCS history would corroborate the above statements. In any case, whether Kanodia was the founder CEO of TCS or not, I think it is quite well accepted that Kanodia did play a significant role in the early years of TCS perhaps operating under F.C. Kohli who may not have been computer savvy but who seems to have had the trust of Tata chairman then, JRD Tata.]
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In continuation of his pioneering streak, Dr. Kanodia established his own Group of Companies under the Banner "Datamatics" in 1975. What he started with a modest team of 10 employees is now 8000 strong. In 1979 he set-up the first dedicated offshore development center for Wang Laboratories. He also established the first satellite link for Software development from India, between its software development center in Mumbai and AT&T Bell labs USA in 1991.
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*) Narendra Patni. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narendra_Patni:

Narendra Patni (1943 – 3 June 2014) was an Indian chief executive officer who founded Patni Computer Systems. He was born to a Marwari Jain family.
Patni was a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He held an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. As of 2005, his net worth was US $750 million.
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*) Mahindra BT (British Telecom) now called Tech Mahindra, I believe. While the company may be viewed surely as one of pioneers of Indian software services sector, perhaps the founder, Anand Mahindra, has to be viewed as a businessman founder rather than as a computer techie founder. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Mahindra:

Tech Mahindra Limited is an Indian multinational provider of information technology (IT), networking technology solutions and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) to the telecommunications industry. Anand Mahindra is the founder of Tech Mahindra, which is headquartered at Pune, India.

Part of the Mahindra Group, Tech Mahindra is a US$4.2 billion company with over 117,000 employees across 90 countries. It provides services to customers which include Fortune 500 companies. It is also one of the Fab 50 companies in Asia, a list compiled by Forbes. Tech Mahindra was ranked #5 in India's software services (IT) firms and overall #111 in Fortune India 500 list for 2012.
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From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anand_Mahindra:

Anand Mahindra (born 1 May 1955) is the chairman and managing director of Mahindra Group. His grandfather JC Mahindra co-founded the company in Mumbai, India. Founded as a steel trading company, the Group today has a presence in multiple sectors from agribusiness to aerospace. It is considered to be one of the most reputed Indian industrial houses with market leadership in many business verticals including utility vehicles, tractors (world's largest tractor company by volume), after market (India's largest multi-brand pre-owned car company), finance (largest rural NBFC in India), Holidays (India's largest vacation ownership company) and IT (top 5 IT service provider).
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Alma mater:
Lawrence School, Lovedale
Harvard University
Harvard Business School

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Other names which followed the path that Kohli, Kanodia and Patni had made as pioneers in Indian software services area especially in the export sector, and came into great business success (as reflected in 2002 list mentioned above) are Narayana Murthy (Infosys), Azim Premi and Ashok Soota (Wipro). But I don't think they can be viewed as pioneers of Indian software services area. In my considered view, Kanodia as tech entrepreneur for TCS and later Datamatics, and Patni are two ****vital**** pioneers of Indian software services industry, especially in the export sector. SEEPZ, Mumbai, http://www.seepz.gov.in/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEEPZ, was the electronics duty free zone which was the happening place in the 80s for the Indian software services EXPORT industry with all the top companies having their main EXPORT related office there - TCS, Tata Burroughs Limted (offshoot of TCS in a way) which I think got renamed to Tata Infotech later on, Datamatics, Patni Computer Services, Mahindra-BT etc. I had a ring side view of it as I was largely associated with Datamatics, SEEPZ unit from 1984 to 1990 though I did spend nearly 3 years of this period abroad on software projects, and a few months in Datamatics' local software services office in Nariman Point, Mumbai.
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A Indian correspondent wrote (and was OK with sharing; slightly edited):

Dear Ravi

Your message was very interesting. The table summarising the Indian IT companies and their founders has some gaps.

1. For Infosys, it mentions Narayana Murthy but leaves out Nilekani (IIT Bombay) and the other founders (of less importance than these two). Nilekani played a crucial role in propelling Infosys into the big time. In 1997, the annual turnover of Infosys was less than the annual profits of TCS. From there, Nilekani pushed Infosys past Wipro into No.2 position and kept it there. For many people, Infosys was THE IT company as TCS was a division of Tata Sons until it was made a separate company in 2004. Nilekani's capability is best demonstrated by Adhaar/UIDAI which he conceived, set up and got running by making the best use of government and other capabilities. Even today, people point to the high security built into the Adhaar system even though it is not reflected in the way government departments misuse Adhaar numbers etc.

2. Mahindra relied on his top IT people like Kiran Deshpande (who later left to found his own company Air-Tight Systems with Pravin Bhagwat).

3. Vivek Paul's role in Wipro was very important. He was an outsider and started as head of WiproGE Medical Systems. He later became Vice-Chairman of Wipro before leaving and returning for the US

4. Nothing was said about Cognizant. Yes, it is registered in the US but most of its employees are in India. So it is a de facto Indian IT company.

And so on. I am sure the report was not trying to be comprehensive but, since you know the business, I thought you may be interested in these details.
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By the way, the Westinghouse load despatch system was installed by Tata Power, not TCS. There was no (or not much) local contribution to that software that I know of.

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I responded (slightly edited):

Thanks --name-snipped--. Interesting additional info. Yes, the Stanford project book does not cite key players other than the lead founder of the companies it listed. I think your input fills up some of the gaps from a perspective of (former) Indian software techies like me.
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Some additional thoughts of mine on this topic:

On this topic, I am focusing on entrepreneurs some of whom started off with some technical background (though not innovation) in the USA, but who were the vital pioneering contributors to IT software services export growth story in India. Technical innovation was very limited in the (business) pioneering days of Indian IT software services export growth story as top level architecture and design used to be handed down from USA customers. But we learned about design and architecture as we studied such stuff handed down to us, and also read books to back up our understanding, and perhaps in a decade or so from the early 80s when this (business) pioneering work started, we were in a position to offer complete IT solutions from architecture to design to development and support to foreign customers. I was an intimate part of this story and so am speaking from experience about growing from programming work to design to architecture.

I think I should say here that I have read huge number of manuals and books and tech. magazines on computers and software architecture, design and development. As a tech. consultant which is what I became in the latter stages of my 18 year international software industry career, such reading & study were vital for me to keep reasonably up to date on what was going on in the software development field.

However, most of the solutions that I was involved with or came to know of, even in the 1990s (I quit the Indian IT consultancy work field in Aug. 2002, having started in this field in Mar. 1984 as a trainee programmer), followed Western (primarily USA) innovated architecture & design models/standards e.g. OOAD, n-tier architecture, UML, OSI Networking protocols, distributed n-tier architecture models, COM/DCOM, CORBA ....

At that time, while some Indian companies may have done some TECHNICAL pioneering work, I had not come to know of ANY SINGLE technical pioneering contribution from any Indian company or academic/non-academic research institution, that had won enough acceptance to get widely known and so be considered for solutions that we offered to foreign clients.

I am not getting into the Whys of it here. I am just giving my frank view of the matter from my ring-side view of Indian IT software services business success story in 80s and 90s. That success story which helped Indian economy in a big way, was a business entrepreneurship and technical work along well defined industry standards and practices success story but NOT really a technical innovation success story. The lack of technical innovation does not really take away from the Indian software development services success story of that period, IMHO. The technical innovations would happen abroad, typically the USA, and we (including tech. consultants like me) would study and understand the innovations and incorporate it in our software development models/processes.

[I thank wikipedia and authors and publishers of the book, Making IT: The Rise of Asia in High Tech, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extracts (one table pic from the book, Making IT) from their website and book on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]