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Dataquest: A 40-year journey

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Sunil Rajguru
New Update

Both CyberMedia and Dataquest were born in 1982 and have been integral to the ICT story of India. As we have entered our fortieth year, it’s been one long and momentous journey.

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The New Computer Policy came in 1984 and that’s been a landmark in shaping the technology story of India. Things really picked up pace after that. The Software Policy of 1986 was another milestone. The Liberalization policy of 1991 opened up India to the world and that brought sweeping changes to each and every industry in India, IT being no different.

The 1990s was the most happening decade since Independence and it was not just the economic reforms. The foundations were laid for Bangalore to become the Silicon Valley of India and that led the way for the IT industry across the rest of India. The National Telecom Policy put us on the path of becoming an ICT power.

The commercial Internet connected us with the world. At the end of the century the Millennial Bug or the Y2K crisis, thanks to the role we played, meant that we became an IT services superpower. The DQ Top 20 charted the rise and fall of these companies in detail.

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The 2000s saw SMBs jump on to the IT bandwagon. The smartphone, mobile broadband and startup revolutions all came one after another and fed on to each other. In between you had the cloud and data center world spreading all around and businesses greatly benefiting.

The Dataquest ICT Awards started in 1993. That has been a star-studded affair. Current Prime Minister Narendra Modi was Chief Guest in 2014 just before he won in the general elections. Politicians like the late Pramod Mahajan (ICT Minister) and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu won as did bureaucrats like Sam Pitroda and N Vittal; along with NASSCOM veterans like late Dewang Mehta and Som Mittal.

Most of the winners across various categories of course have been ICT industry moguls like Ajai K Chowdhry (HCL), Azim Premji (Wipro), NR Narayana Murthy (Infosys), Ashok Soota (Mindtree-Happiest Minds), Shiv Nadar (HCL Technologies), Rajendra S Pawar (NIIT), Sunil Bharti Mittal (Airtel), Nandan Nilekani (Infosys-Aadhaar), Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm), Bhavish Aggarwal (Ola), Ritesh Agarwal (OYO) and many many others.

It's been 2+ years of the Covid pandemic during which we have been doing webinars, virtual events and panel discussions on a regular basis. The world somehow learnt to cope in the virtual. But we are back with a physical event in the post-pandemic era via the Digital Leadership Conclave that presented the 29th ICT Awards in New Delhi. The theme was: Let's Transform at Scale with NeXtGen Tech. We will continue to serve our readers in the Hybrid World as events in the virtual world will continue along with those in the physical one.

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