TRAILBLAZERS: From Small Beginnings...

BEL



Set up in 1954, it began as a state-owned electronics producer for the

military. It scaled up rapidly during the 60’s, thanks to the prevalent

military environment. Though eventually its inability to bring down prices would

make it uncompetitive, BEL is remembered here as India’s first training ground

for engineers which by the early 70’s, was the only company in India to take

on the full cycle of semiconductor wafer fabrication. The fact that BEL was

located in Bangalore also had a lot to do with the city eventually becoming

India’s Silicon Valley.

CDOT



Started in 1984 to designing and develop digital exchanges and facilitate

their large scale manufacture by the Indian industry, CDOT has since expanded

its scope to the development of transmission equipment. CDOT’s greatest

contribution would be indigenously developing rugged electronic switches that

worked without the need for air conditioning. These switches, available at a

fraction of the cost of imported equipment, continue to support most of the

telephone exchanges working in India. The organization has delivered nearly 24

million lines in the Indian network. In addition, 32,900 rural exchanges have

helped connect in rural India. If telecommunications is what has spurred Indian

IT in recent times, its time CDOT took a bow.

CDAC



Sheer grit is something that this organization has aplenty. When the US

slapped sanctions on India regarding the procurement of the Cray supercomputer,

CDAC rolled up its sleeves and made India’s first super computer — The PARAM-

in a record time of 3 years.CDAC delivered India’s first supercomputer

PARAM-8000 in 1991 and went on to build PARAM-10000 in 1998, propelling India

into an esoteric league of five nations. The latest PARAM operates at a speed of

100 gigaflops, or 100 billion floating point operations per second. All in all,

CDAC has single handedly catapulted India into the realm of supercomputing —

something that would have been thought of as being impossible a decade and a

half ago.

The

Educational Institutes: IITs, RECs...



The cradle of the IT revolution in India — the IITs and the Regional

Engineering Colleges (RECs) are socialist India’s stupendous gifts to Indian

IT. Rarely does one run into a company without an ‘IIT-ian’ in its top

management. The IITs and RECs contributed handsomely to the first wave of men

who went on student visas to be a part of the Silicon Valley revolution

including the likes of Arun Netravalli and, Vinod Khosla. Starting with the

first IIT in August 1951 at Kharagpur with just 42 teachers and 224 students,

the IITs have today grown to seven institutes that are the bedrock of

engineering excellence in the country. If the Indian IT industry is an position

to look at itself with pride today, a good amount of credit also goes to the 17

RECs and 1000 odd institutes in the country which offer IT courses for nearly

66,000 students every year.

ECIL



Set up in 1967 under the Atomic Energy Commission, Hyderabad based

Electronic Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL) was meant to be the country’s

"national champion" in computers. Its brief was to locally manufacture

a wide range of systems along with international partners — increasingly the

local content to the point that would eventually make India self sufficient in

its IT needs. With a legal monopoly from the government of India ECIL was

responsible for almost all government and public sector installations throughout

the 70s. Among other things it tied up with Nordsk Data Systems for the MEDHA

which ran on its own operating system. Eventually however that monopoly would

work against it, making in uncompetitive in the newly emerging environment. ECIL

is remembered here for nurturing some of the best engineering minds in the

country during the IT industry’s infancy.

TIFR



If one organization can be called as the fountainhead of Indian IT, it is

the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Founded on June 1st, 1945, this

organization was the result of a letter written by Homi Bhabha to J.R.D. Tata

expressing his vision for a fundamental research institute in India. In the

initial days, research was conducted in the areas of cosmic rays, high-energy

physics, theoretical physics and mathematics but was soon extended to other

scientific areas. The institute pioneered activity in the field of computer

technology by designing India’s first computer–TIFRAC, based on vacuum tubes

and transistors. Research groups were also set up which worked on emerging

fields such as accelerators, software technology, and educational research.

Subsequently, some of these groups were to become the nucleus of organizations

like the NCST, C-DoT, and CMC.

CMC



Step back to the mid sixties, the Indian government wanted IBM to share

ownership of its operations with Indian organizations. Big Blue refused. The

Government of India backed out. After all if IBM left who would service the IBM

installations across the country? Nearly a decade later, in 1978, the government

proposed the same again, this time, strongly — share ownership or leave. IBM

chose to pack up its operations and leave India. What was the secret of the

government’s resolve, this time around? An organization called Computer

Maintenance Corporation (CMC), which was set up in 1976. CMC was given a legal

monopoly over servicing computers made by foreign suppliers, primarily the 800

odd IBM installations across the country. Eventually it would develop expertise

on 40 different foreign platforms. CMC is also credited with developing the

country’s first commercial computer network called INDONET.

National

Informatics Center



From software for computerization of driving licenses in Pondicherry to

company registration software in Sikkim, NIC today undertakes computerization of

most government departments across 29 state capitals and 6 union territory

headquarters and district centers in more than 540 Districts of India. Started

in 1977, with an annual operating budget of Rs 5 mn, NIC was set to provide

information services for administrative support. But its crowning glory is

NICNET, which became operational in 1988. Today, it is one of the largest VSAT

based networks of its kind in the country with over 1400 VSATs.

IISc



Established in 1911, it is the first Institute in the country to introduce

integrated Ph.D. programs in biological, chemical and physical sciences for

science graduates. Its biggest contribution to Indian IT came from its

Department of Computer Science and Automation. By the mid 60’s, the institute

already had a strong group working in the areas of control systems and

applications of systems theory. Eventually, a School of Automation was

established which would conduct research in the areas of computer science and

engineering and automation. The school started functioning informally from 1971.

A full-fledged Hybrid computer laboratory was attached to the school as early as

1975. The institute also pioneered research in niche areas like artificial

intelligence, robotics, graphics, natural languages processing, and theoretical

computer science.

NCST



Established in 1975 with a grant of $3 mn from the United Nations

Development Programme, NCST was envisaged to undertake research in emerging

areas of software technology, provide continuing education in software

technology, and develop software in niche technology areas. In 1986, NCST along

the five IITs, IISc, DoE, decided to set up Ernet (Education and Research

Network), a nationwide network for research and development in computers and

communication. Initially, X.25 and the OSI standards were considered but the

Ernet group had the vision to choose TCP/IP, the Internet Protocol.