BEL
Set up in 1954, it began as a state-owned electronics producer for the military. It scaled up rapidly during the 60’s, thanks to the prevalent military environment. Though eventually its inability to bring down prices would make it uncompetitive, BEL is remembered here as India’s first training ground for engineers which by the early 70’s, was the only company in India to take on the full cycle of semiconductor wafer fabrication. The fact that BEL was located in Bangalore also had a lot to do with the city eventually becoming India’s Silicon Valley.

CDOT
Started in 1984 to designing and develop digital exchanges and facilitate their large scale manufacture by the Indian industry, CDOT has since expanded its scope to the development of transmission equipment. CDOT’s greatest contribution would be indigenously developing rugged electronic switches that worked without the need for air conditioning. These switches, available at a fraction of the cost of imported equipment, continue to support most of the telephone exchanges working in India. The organization has delivered nearly 24 million lines in the Indian network. In addition, 32,900 rural exchanges have helped connect in rural India. If telecommunications is what has spurred Indian IT in recent times, its time CDOT took a bow.

CDAC
Sheer grit is something that this organization has aplenty. When the US slapped sanctions on India regarding the procurement of the Cray supercomputer, CDAC rolled up its sleeves and made India’s first super computer – The PARAM- in a record time of 3 years.CDAC delivered India’s first supercomputer PARAM-8000 in 1991 and went on to build PARAM-10000 in 1998, propelling India into an esoteric league of five nations. The latest PARAM operates at a speed of 100 gigaflops, or 100 billion floating point operations per second. All in all, CDAC has single handedly catapulted India into the realm of supercomputing – something that would have been thought of as being impossible a decade and a half ago.

The Educational Institutes: IITs, RECs...
The cradle of the IT revolution in India – the IITs and the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) are socialist India’s stupendous gifts to Indian IT. Rarely does one run into a company without an ‘IIT-ian’ in its top management. The IITs and RECs contributed handsomely to the first wave of men who went on student visas to be a part of the Silicon Valley revolution including the likes of Arun Netravalli and, Vinod Khosla. Starting with the first IIT in August 1951 at Kharagpur with just 42 teachers and 224 students, the IITs have today grown to seven institutes that are the bedrock of engineering excellence in the country. If the Indian IT industry is an position to look at itself with pride today, a good amount of credit also goes to the 17 RECs and 1000 odd institutes in the country which offer IT courses for nearly 66,000 students every year.

ECIL
Set up in 1967 under the Atomic Energy Commission, Hyderabad based Electronic Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL) was meant to be the country’s "national champion" in computers. Its brief was to locally manufacture a wide range of systems along with international partners – increasingly the local content to the point that would eventually make India self sufficient in its IT needs. With a legal monopoly from the government of India ECIL was responsible for almost all government and public sector installations throughout the 70s. Among other things it tied up with Nordsk Data Systems for the MEDHA which ran on its own operating system. Eventually however that monopoly would work against it, making in uncompetitive in the newly emerging environment. ECIL is remembered here for nurturing some of the best engineering minds in the country during the IT industry’s infancy.

TIFR
If one organization can be called as the fountainhead of Indian IT, it is the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Founded on June 1st, 1945, this organization was the result of a letter written by Homi Bhabha to J.R.D. Tata expressing his vision for a fundamental research institute in India. In the initial days, research was conducted in the areas of cosmic rays, high-energy physics, theoretical physics and mathematics but was soon extended to other scientific areas. The institute pioneered activity in the field of computer technology by designing India’s first computer—TIFRAC, based on vacuum tubes and transistors. Research groups were also set up which worked on emerging fields such as accelerators, software technology, and educational research. Subsequently, some of these groups were to become the nucleus of organizations like the NCST, C-DoT, and CMC.

CMC
Step back to the mid sixties, the Indian government wanted IBM to share ownership of its operations with Indian organizations. Big Blue refused. The Government of India backed out. After all if IBM left who would service the IBM installations across the country? Nearly a decade later, in 1978, the government proposed the same again, this time, strongly – share ownership or leave. IBM chose to pack up its operations and leave India. What was the secret of the government’s resolve, this time around? An organization called Computer Maintenance Corporation (CMC), which was set up in 1976. CMC was given a legal monopoly over servicing computers made by foreign suppliers, primarily the 800 odd IBM installations across the country. Eventually it would develop expertise on 40 different foreign platforms. CMC is also credited with developing the country’s first commercial computer network called INDONET.

National Informatics Center
From software for computerization of driving licenses in Pondicherry to company registration software in Sikkim, NIC today undertakes computerization of most government departments across 29 state capitals and 6 union territory headquarters and district centers in more than 540 Districts of India. Started in 1977, with an annual operating budget of Rs 5 mn, NIC was set to provide information services for administrative support. But its crowning glory is NICNET, which became operational in 1988. Today, it is one of the largest VSAT based networks of its kind in the country with over 1400 VSATs.

IISc
Established in 1911, it is the first Institute in the country to introduce integrated Ph.D. programs in biological, chemical and physical sciences for science graduates. Its biggest contribution to Indian IT came from its Department of Computer Science and Automation. By the mid 60’s, the institute already had a strong group working in the areas of control systems and applications of systems theory. Eventually, a School of Automation was established which would conduct research in the areas of computer science and engineering and automation. The school started functioning informally from 1971. A full-fledged Hybrid computer laboratory was attached to the school as early as 1975. The institute also pioneered research in niche areas like artificial intelligence, robotics, graphics, natural languages processing, and theoretical computer science.

NCST
Established in 1975 with a grant of $3 mn from the United Nations Development Programme, NCST was envisaged to undertake research in emerging areas of software technology, provide continuing education in software technology, and develop software in niche technology areas. In 1986, NCST along the five IITs, IISc, DoE, decided to set up Ernet (Education and Research Network), a nationwide network for research and development in computers and communication. Initially, X.25 and the OSI standards were considered but the Ernet group had the vision to choose TCP/IP, the Internet Protocol.