India Telecom

March 3, 2003
IITian network to turn India into technology hub

NEW DELHI -- The alumni of the five Indian Institutes of Technology have formed a network termed "pan IIT initiative." It will link some 50,000 IITians across 50 top cities worldwide, with the aim to create a 'global skill base' in India that will drive high technology applications.

The initiative crowns the golden jubilee celebrations of the IITs, the first of which was set up in 1951 at Kharagpur in West Bengal, 100km from Kolkata. Within the next ten years came more such institutions at Chennai, Delhi, Kanpur and Mumbai. On the eve of the golden jubilee celebrations, the popular American TV programme 60 Minutes described the Indian IITs as "the most important university you have never heard of."

It referred to the contributions of the IITians in the United States that helped the country to catch back the lead in industries lost to the Japanese in the early 80s. The illustrious names include Vinod Khosla, co-founder, SunMicro Systems, Kanwal Rekhi, TiE chairman, Desh Deshpande, founder of successful IT company Sycamore, Victor Menezes, senior vice-chairman, CitiGroup, Rajat Gupta, managing director of world renowned management consultants Mckensey &Co., Manoj Singh, managing director for America, Deloitte Consulting, Arun Sarin, CEO, Vodafone, Purnendu Chatterjee, founder, Chatterjee Group, Arjun Malhotra, chairman, TechSpan, to mention only a handful among the hundreds who have driven the Infocom and financial services industries of America. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has two Indians in key positions in his company and the second richest man in US, Warren Buffet, also has IITians in key positions in his company the Hathaway group, the largest financial and investment consultants and mutual fund partners.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos has described the Indian IITians as "world treasure." Bill Gates says the computer industry has benefited greatly from them. Indian engineers and management experts, most of them from IITs, have founded over 40 per cent of new enterprises in the Silicon Valley.

Ambassador Blackwill has underlined the importance of IITs in making India a technological force. He said: "If indeed we can think of India today as a technological force in the world, a rising great power and a strategic partner of the US, that vision is owed greatly to the contribution that the IIT. It has made significant contributions toward the Indian scientific and technological achievements during the last 50 years."

With US firms acknowledging that software products and services from Indian companies are contributing to the competitive advantage of the US products and services, and with Indian IITians taking part at the highest levels of corporate management and financial services, the perception of India in the US has undergone a vast change in the last 20 years. From a country of Maharajas and snake charmers, it has become a country from where you can draw upon the intellectual resources of a large number of high-technology people. Sabir Bhatia's Hotmail is, for instance, touching every American's life. In top level labs like NASA, Lawrence Livermore, Bell Labs, IBM labs, etc. a large number of talented Indians are working at top levels. Bell Labs president till recently, Dr. Arun Netravali, is one for instance.

While what we used to call brain drain has now been bringing us an inward remittance of six billion dollars annually, the IITians wealth creation and business methods within the country are changing the face of business here. Some of the earliest businesses set up by the IITians include Shiv Nadar's HCL group and Rajendra Pawar's NIIT group. Infosys chairman N.R. Narayanamurthy has become the IT icon of the whole country and has spawned 87 millionaires from among his employees. Murthy and his MD Nandan Nilekani have featured as the Asian Business leaders of 2002 in the Fortune magazine.

With the opening up of our economy, the IITians are now looking for more business opportunities and technology development within the country. Narayanamurthy's saga has been well chronicled. Until 1998, his company Infosys was a small player in software. It has now shot up to over $600 million in turnover. In his interview to Fortune, he pointed out how he had to make 18 trips to New Delhi to get a clearance for importing a computer during the control and command era of the economy.

The HRD and Science and Technology minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi has urged the IITians to look increasingly eastward and "innovate to solve Indian problems." Murthy's experience shows that government policies also will have an equal bearing in the change of direction of IITians in future. In any case, with the coming of business process outsourcing as a major factor and improvement of communications within the country, it would be profitable also to develop products and services here and vend them abroad rather than body shop or innovate in the West.

Many IITians are now paying back to their alma mater in different ways. TechSpan chairman Arjun Malhotra is chairing a group of IITians of Kharagpur IIT to raise $200 million (nearly Rs. 1,000 crores) for a vision 2020 programme to upgrade Kharagpur to a world class institution like MIT. Vinod Khosla has announced $ 5 million to the IIT Delhi and Avi Nash of Goldman Sachs $1 million to IIT Mumbai. More such endowments are expected in the golden jubilee year.