The IT sector in India has famously been amazingly successful - it has grown over 10 fold in the last decade to around $100bn in 2011. IT is not an easy sector to succeed in - computer programmes are incredibly complex things to build and even more complex to make work. My limited experience of running technology companies in the mobile sector has given me some idea of just how difficult. So how and why did India succeed in an industry which should have been one of the most difficult to penetrate?
My thoughts on this were first aroused when my worldly goods were held up for a month in Mumbai port on their way from London, and yet I knew that I could email client quotes and contracts and upload software code in a second, from my new office in Fort, Mumbai. These suspicions were confirmed when I went to a talk recently, organised by the Indian Business Group in Mumbai, and featuring Dr Lalit Kanodia. Dr Kanodia is an IT genius and visionary - head of his class at MIT, helped write the code that formed MULTIX, the precursor of UNIX, and was the founding CEO of Tata Consulting Services, now India's largest IT company.
The IBG has been organising some inspirational events, and his was one of the most interesting talks I have ever been to. He spoke of the Indian Government trying to jail him when he set up the first satellite data link between India and the USA in the late 1960's. He then told of the Minister for IT coming to see him in the early 1970's to ask what exactly was TCS doing, and how could the Government control it. Dr Kanodia's response: "You can't control it, and even if you could, I wouldn't tell you how".
For me, that sums up India's IT success. Imagine what could happen if the rest of India were set free?
My thoughts on this were first aroused when my worldly goods were held up for a month in Mumbai port on their way from London, and yet I knew that I could email client quotes and contracts and upload software code in a second, from my new office in Fort, Mumbai. These suspicions were confirmed when I went to a talk recently, organised by the Indian Business Group in Mumbai, and featuring Dr Lalit Kanodia. Dr Kanodia is an IT genius and visionary - head of his class at MIT, helped write the code that formed MULTIX, the precursor of UNIX, and was the founding CEO of Tata Consulting Services, now India's largest IT company.
The IBG has been organising some inspirational events, and his was one of the most interesting talks I have ever been to. He spoke of the Indian Government trying to jail him when he set up the first satellite data link between India and the USA in the late 1960's. He then told of the Minister for IT coming to see him in the early 1970's to ask what exactly was TCS doing, and how could the Government control it. Dr Kanodia's response: "You can't control it, and even if you could, I wouldn't tell you how".
For me, that sums up India's IT success. Imagine what could happen if the rest of India were set free?
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