A digital history of the digital industry – from the time India imported its first computer, the HEC2M, for the Planning Commission in the 1950s to the present: that’s Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan’s latest initiative and tribute to his own industry and its stalwarts. Unveiled at a function on Sunday evening, the well-researched history is, fittingly in the age of apps, contained in an app, appropriately called itihaasa.
The app already contains 600 short videos of interviews with the likes of F.C. Kohli, Prof. Rajaraman, Prof. Mahabala, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, S. Ramadorai, Nandan Nilekani, N.Vittal and others, and some 350 archived photographs, documents and articles that take one through the origins and growth of the IT services industry. The app can be continuously updated with new material. More importantly, said Mr. Gopalakrishnan, it is a complete platform that could be used to record other histories and create digital museums.
The highlight of the evening was when IT millionaires and billionaires honoured four of their computer science teachers Prof. H.N. Mahabala, Prof. V. Rajaraman, Prof. Deepak Phatak, Dr. S. Ramani – the men who taught Murthy, Nilekani, Ashok Soota and dozens of other industry leaders when they were students at the IITs and made possible today’s $150 billion IT services industry.
