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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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Get Four
|  | SEPTEMBER 9, 2004
"India Has Ingenuity" [Page 2 of 2] Q: Tell me about the birth of Tata Consultancy Services. A: I used to be with Tata Power [one of India's largest private power utilities]. I'm an electrical engineer, I did physics and math at Punjab University, then [obtained] a masters in electrical engineering from MIT. The Tata group did realize the computer was a new technology. On Apr. 1, 1968, TCS was set up to provide computer services. Earlier, I had been using computers for Tata Power. We at Tata Power were developing the design for a power system and the transmission of energy, etc. We had a digital computer to control the entire power grid, including hydro, thermal, and nuclear energy. That's why you don't get any power blackouts or shutdowns in Bombay city, which is powered by us. Then I was drafted to TCS for a year to build it. We didn't have any outsourced work then. For years, we did work only in India, helping local banks get [computerized] interbranch reconciliations. And we computerized the telephone directory of Bombay in 1972. For our business to be successful, we needed bright people -- plentiful in India. And we needed to learn about technology. But technology was only available in the West so we had to go there. In those days, I had became the director of Institute of Electrical Engineers and Electronic Engineers in New York, and it took me to New York three or four times a year. I used the time in those two years to build up contacts in the U.S. One was with the Burroughs Computers, the No. 2 computer company in the U.S. then. They bought our services for their B1700 new series of computers -- they wanted us to develop for them a health-care system to sell to their clients along with the computer. But we had a formidable challenge: We didn't have a Burroughs machine in India. So we wrote the whole software for that on an International Computers machine, with an automatic filter which would filter the ICL-written software for the Burroughs machine. That filter was of a very high order of software engineering. Burroughs used that filter next year to replace the ICL machines for their U.K. clients with Burroughs machines. Then TCS was in business. Each time Burroughs changed to their computers, they used us. The fight in the first 10 years was not with foreign competitors but with the government. The government and others had a negative mindset about computers. We had high tariffs and tough unions. It took us three years to get [the approval to import] a large Burroughs computer for New Dehli. By the time we got permission for it, the computer we asked for was already obsolete. But finally the government appreciated the need for the latest technology, and we got the next-generation computer. Q: What inspires you? Who inspired you? A: I'm inspired by our people. I like to encourage people. My father was a businessman, had a department store in Peshawar. My mother studied till the 8th grade and read the newspaper every day till she died at 75. I always admired her for it. We moved to Lucknow after the partition of India and Pakistan. My eldest brother didn't go to college because he had to run the business, but he was self-taught. He loved Dickens and autobiographies -- which I read, too. And he encouraged me. Q: If you look out into the future, what do you see for India? A: We have the best human capital. We have more than our fair share of intelligent, hard-working people, great raw material and assets. We have to learn how to use it. Q: What's next on your agenda? A: We're now experimenting with the public school system, creating teacher aids, and computerizing the extra coaching classes that all teachers here give. Students will pay money for the coaching program and see the teacher once a week to complete it. And from 8th grade on, everyone must get some vocational training -- it's not necessary for everyone to go to college. There are solutions [for everything], but we have to work on them.
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