India's telecom architect
Born in Orissa and educated in Vadodara and Chicago, Sam Pitroda, owes both his fame and infamy to his proximity to the Gandhi family. The infamy part is politically debatable, but when Indira Gandhi invited him in 1984 from the US to set up C-DOT, nobody realized the arrival of the architect of India's telecom revolution. The PCO revolution scripted during this tenure was, unarguably, because of Pitroda's tireless efforts. Controversy however seems to dog Pitroda-even after being appointed the chairman of Knowledge Commission by Manmohan Singh, he was embroiled in the hullabaloo over reservations in premier institutions. But, Pitroda is a successful inventor and entrepreneur in his own right. He owns over 50 patents related to m-commerce and is also the founder of C-SAM.

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