FC Kohli: The IT visionary India forgot to remember

TCS even though there was no IT industry to speak of. What followed was one of the great acts of industrial creation in post-independence India.The foundations of what is today a $300 billion industry were built on his clarity about the opportunity.

In an address to the Computer Society of India in 1975, he put it with characteristic directness: "Many years ago, there was an industrial revolution; we missed it for reasons beyond our control. Today, there is a new revolution—a revolution in information technology (IT).

If we miss this opportunity, those who follow us will not forgive us."The early years were improvised and audacious in equal measure. With no domestic market to speak of, Kohli cultivated a relationship with Burroughs Corporation and in 1973, TCS completed its first offshore software delivery for the US company opening the door to contracts from the City of Detroit, and the State University of New York, and eventually a financial accounting package for UK building societies that is widely regarded as the first offshore software services deal of consequence.In lockstep with TCS’s rising fortunes, other brilliant IT entrepreneurs emerged.

Men like Shiv Nadar, Azim Premji, and N.R. Narayana Murthy were visionaries in their own right, but barring Infosys, a software native from birth, every major Indian IT company started by assembling hardware, with limited success.It was the Y2K scare in the West and a respected market leader that had never abandoned its software convictions that pointed the way forward.

Infosys, HCL, and Wipro had the agility to pivot to software services. Dozens of others that didn't are footnotes in the story of India's most successful industry.It is a measure of Kohli's personality that