The eclectic innovator: Sam Pitroda's unconventional roadmap to success

In the evolutionary history of Indian technology and innovation, Satyanarayan (Sam) Gangaram Pitroda’s status as India’s original tech guru is secure, though he doesn’t get enough credit for the telecom revolution that has seen the country’s teledensity jump from around 2% in the 1980s to over 90% today.

His fascinating journey from Titlagarh in Odisha to the powerways of India started with C-DoT which Pitroda set up in 1984 at the behest of the young and still unsullied prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. By then, the man with the wild mane had established himself in the US telecom industry.

After studying at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, in 1966 he went to work for GTE, then the largest independent telephone company in the US. A successful career followed and in 1975, he filed a patent for an electronic diary that could track appointments and remind users of upcoming events.

On one of his visits home, he was confronted with the depressing reality of India’s pathetic telecom infrastructure. With what he called a mix of “ignorance and arrogance", Pitroda decided he would do something about it. 

A chance meeting with Rajiv Gandhi when he had gone to meet his mother, then prime minister Indira Gandhi, led to a mandate when the former took over as PM.

The organization he set up became a hothouse for talented young men and women exhilarated by the opportunity to work in a government organization with a degree of freedom and creativity that was unheard of in the Indian context.

 

With a grant of ₹36 crore from the government, C-DoT was given three years in 1984 to design a digital switching system suitable for the Indian environment. Working out of five rooms in the beat-up state-owned Akbar Hotel in New Delhi’s Chanakyapuri area, the young team with an average age of 25, set about its mission with the zeal of a Silicon Valley startup.

It wasn’t uncommon for many of the 400-odd employees to work through the night, often using the makeshift desks to catch a nap. Three years later, C-DOT delivered the first of its Rural Automatic Exchanges which won encomiums for their ruggedness and ability to function in the most difficult of environments. Significantly, these could be manufactured locally, obviating the need for imports.

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It was the first of the baby steps that would eventually lead to a telecom revolution in the country. Encouraged by its success, the Telecom Commission was established in 1989, and subscriber trunk dialing/public call offices (STD/PCOs) were introduced across the country. They also ushered in the first whiff of privatization in a sector which till then appeared to be stuck in a time warp.

 

Many of the young people who cut their teeth at C-DoT, would go on to join the telecom industry when it was opened to the private sector, post liberalization. Through it all, Pitroda was committed to the idea of helping develop local technologies and served as C-DoT’s principal advisor, taking a token salary of only ₹1 a year.

On one occasion when he was asked to comment on the masses of assembled hardware that was the hallmark of India’s IT industry in the late 1980s, he replied “I have seen a lot of plastic and a lot of silicon. What I would like to know is what we can do with all this." By the 1990s, as a world-class software exports industry started emerging, Pitroda had got his answer.

After Rajiv Gandhi lost power in 1989, C-DoT too lost favour with the new regime, and Pitroda was banished into relative obscurity.

A minimalist

Despite his influential position and wealth as well as political swashbuckling, Pitroda has always been a minimalist, preferring a simple lifestyle. He is happy to pass up exotic food for plain dal and rice, a vestige of his Gujarati origins despite spending over half a century in the US. Time, he maintains, is in the mind and not on the wrist which is why he never wears flashy watches.

For a man who has been at the forefront of technology for decades, he comes across as a closet Luddite almost. A reluctant smartphone user, he prefers face-to-face conversations and stumps younger people with a flurry of hand written notes. Not surprisingly, he is a paper lover: his library is legendary, and he catches people off guard discussing blockchain and flitting the next moment to the intricacies of Kabir.

Long before he got embroiled in political controversies, Sam Pitroda had proved that driven by one man’s messianic zeal, government-funded R&D could deliver tangible products. C-DOT’s exchanges led to a mushrooming of privately operated STD booths throughout the country which gave Indians a taste of the difference good communications could make.

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