By Jayant Krishna
Widely identified as the father of the Indian IT business, Faqir Chand Kohli, the founder CEO of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), was awarded a complete scholarship for larger education abroad by the Indian government in the 1940s. He insisted all through his profession that all he did in life was an try to repay that debt to the nation. The IT-ITeS sector contributes 8% to India’s GDP and has captured half of the worldwide outsourcing market place. However, but for Kohli, there would either have been no Indian IT business at all or it would have lost its early-mover benefit by a couple of decades.
Prof Clayton Christensen as soon as told me at the Harvard Business School that the only time there has been disruptive innovation in the Indian computer software business was when TCS effectively tested the onsite-offshore model, heralding the physical separation of the consumer from the computer software engineer. FCK, as he was identified, would depute practically 20% of TCS pros on domestic projects that amounted to much less than 10% of the income, considering the fact that he believed it would be a shame if our engineers do cutting-edge perform for worldwide MNCs even though India is deprived of their solutions. He regretted that in spite of his ideal efforts, the government did not set up a planet-class semiconductor business, the prime purpose that India in no way created an indigenous hardware business. FCK’s a different lament was the country’s failure to create computer software in vernacular languages which brought on the digital divide.
Post-retirement, FCK’s iconic perform on adult literacy could have created India completely literate 15 years ago if successive governments had embraced it wholeheartedly. The Padma Bhushan, honorary doctorates, international recognitions and lifetime achievement awards came his way, but he remained largely indifferent to such felicitations.
As a young consultant throughout my early days at the Tata Group in 1994, I went to talk about a energy sector restructuring project with him. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he had reduce his teeth in the Indian energy business ahead of moving to IT. Predictably, he told me in his characteristic style, “Young man, be better prepared next time if you wish to be better received.” Earlier, I had heard ahead of a meeting with him that he usually anticipated his associates to be prim and correct, dressed in a blazer devoid of exception. I speedily borrowed one particular from a colleague, though this didn’t escape his keen eye. Once the meeting ended, he remarked, “Well, gentleman, that blazer doesn’t appear to be yours!”
I have usually felt blessed to have received so substantially like and affection from Kohli and his customer-rights lawyer wife Swarn. I travelled extensively with him in the UK and in India with him sharing numerous anecdotes. Once even though at an airport shop I was acquiring a wallet, but he insisted on footing the bill, remarking, “You are just like my son.”
For years, he sent a European music magazine to my son Ujjwal when he told FCK that he plays piano. He retired from TCS more than two decades ago and I left TCS practically 5 years back, but we nonetheless get a basket of mangoes grown in Kohli’s Alibaug orchard, each year, devoid of fail. One hardly ever gets such genuinely caring leaders and life-extended mentors like him these days.
Just ahead of the pandemic, I spent an hour with FCK in the exact same Air India Building area overlooking the Marine Drive from which he ran TCS as its longest-serving CEO. Till the age of 96, he worked and study voraciously in his workplace each day.
During Partition, his family members migrated from Pakistan and settled in Lucknow. He remained grateful to the city that gave his family members shelter. He completed BSc (Hons) in Electrical Engineering from Queen’s University, Canada, in 1948, then worked for a year at the Canadian General Electric and subsequently received his MS (Electrical Engineering) from MIT in 1950.
He returned to India in 1951 and joined the Tata Electric Companies exactly where he helped set up India’s very first load dispatching method to handle method operations. Spotting his brilliance, JRD Tata picked him to set up TCS in the late 1960s. Kohli’s obsession for technologies, concentrate on instruction, consumer centricity and procedure rigour became really legendary—and the rest is history. I in no way definitely understood why India in no way conferred the Bharat Ratna on Kohli provided his unparalleled contribution to the nation. Anyway, it was an chance lost for the government considering the fact that FCK had risen above accolades and recognitions he was in a distinct league of leaders.
(The author is group CEO, UK India Business Council, and former CEO, NSDC. During his 22 years with the Tata Group and beyond, he worked closely with Kohli)