In any account of the Indian growth story, it is the rise of the information technology industry that is credited with changing the perception of the country globally. While it may be an exaggeration to say we were thought of exclusively as a country of snake charmers before, there is no doubt that the rise of IT in India was the first wave of entrepreneurship that showcased the country’s economic potential to the world.
It comes as a surprise, therefore, that there is no single work of literature that documents the rise of this industry and the stories of its pioneers. The study of history in India stops at 1947 and there is little self-reflection too, from those within the industry.
This is the problem that Kris Gopalakrishnan, the former executive vice chairman of software giant Infosys and one of its seven founders, contemplated when he left the company in 2014. His response to the problem was not to write a book, but to create a digital museum called Itihaasa that would not only document the history of IT in India but also help chart its future course. Itihaasa is available as an app and it is housed in a not-for-profit that Mr. Gopalakrishnan recently unveiled at an event in Mumbai.
“After I left Infosys and through the course of several conversations with friends and colleagues I had the opportunity to reflect on how the IT industry started and how it evolved,” Mr. Gopalakrishnan said, in an interview with The Hindu .
“We were talking about how the industry was started by first-time entrepreneurs and more interestingly by engineer leaders. If you look at it most of the senior people in IT industry today are from an engineering background.”
He continues: “I thought people both within and outside the industry should know the factors that brought it all together and how significant the achievement is. This is the first wave of entrepreneurship that changed the way the world looks at India.”
There were individual articles that touched on the subject of how the industry started and one book on computing, dealing with the introduction of computers to India, but very little of the personal stories behind the IT revolution. “Rather than doing a lot of interviews and compiling them into a book I decided it would work better as an application simply because I felt it would be more accessible to the youth, who are mostly on apps these days,” he says.
Itihaasa is available on both the Android and IOS platforms. While it deals interactively with a lot of factual information around IT in India, the most captivating aspect of the app are the personal accounts and interviews with stalwarts of the industry like Nandan Nilekani and Azim Premji.
Altogether 44 prominent leaders from the industry are featured and Mr. Gopalakrishnan says the interviews were cut from three- to four-hour conversations in which they recounted their personal journeys while also speaking about what the industry would look like in the future.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan hopes Itihaasa will appeal to those hoping to enter the IT industry as well as young people looking to become entrepreneurs. He also hopes it will inspire more research on the IT industry.
Aside from the application, the not-for-profit company will be called Itihaasa Digital, and will aim to take this project forward.
“We will continue to record the accounts of more people and will do research into how the industry is evolving and how government policy has kept pace with it. Most importantly, we will look at the leadership lessons we can take from our journey so far,” Mr. Gopalakrishnan says.
In the coming months, he says, Itihaasa Digital will expand it's number of employees while also continuing to work with various partners. Now that it is registered as Section 8 company, Mr Gopalakrishnan will also seek some funding from outside.
