50 not out and still hitting the ball out of the park

Dr. BVR Mohan Reddy - a legend of IT industry's glorious century and also the winner of Dataquest Lifetime Achievement Award presses a time-travel button as he chats with Editor Sunil Rajguru about his journey and IT industry's 'coming of age' story from 1991 to 2024. Find out how the country has traversed from entrepreneurship and education back then to now; and what lies a decade ahead.

- DQ Bureau

Congratulations on the award. Thanks. I am very honoured to get this award. Dataquest has earned a tremendous reputation and respect from the IT community. Thanks for choosing me for this honour.

You have had a long journey. Take us back to the early days of Indian IT.

Right. My journey has been long-about 50+ years of my professional career have gone by as I look back. My first encounter with computers was in 1973. I went to IIT Kanpur-considered to have the largest and best computer setups. But these were early days for computers in India. The centre was in a well-architected building with a musical fountain in front of it. Very impressive. Huge IBM computers occupied the floor-space but the power they harboured was less than today's smartphones. Then I went to the University of Michigan for a second Masters' degree. That's when my second encounter with computers happened. I decided - despite being a mechanical engineer-that I will make my career in computers. In 1977, I came back to India. The early days of computing were very interesting. I took up a job in Bangalore - that's when IT was known as EDP (Electronic Data Processing). I was part of system tool areas-designing bespoke applications. I wanted to be an entrepreneur early on in my life. But before I became one in 1991, I skilled myself well. I worked in systems integration and when I saw the winds of change coming in, I took the plunge. I saw an opportunity in engineering services, and I moved on. In 1991, LPG - Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization - was the fuel of the new path for India.

Did the gears shift massively with the onset of the LPG era?