Dr FC Kohli (19 March 1924 – 26 November 2020) was a great mentor. He was the founder and first CEO of the Tata Consultancy Services. His role in developing TCS into a leading software company has been recognized in various ways. He has been named the Father of the Indian Software Industry; the Government had conferred the Padma Bhushan Award on him. Seven or eight universities conferring honorary doctorates on him have indicated the esteem in which academics have held him.
I have had the fortune of benefitting from his mentorship during my career. I will focus here on the first few years I had known Dr Kohli. Some of you would know about his work for the Tata Electric Company, and later for the Tata Consulting Engineers. It was during 1965-67 that I first met him. Tata Electric was getting interested in computerizing data acquisition at its power generating stations. The plan was to start in this manner and then gradually build up to implement computer control and load balancing. I was assisting the Radio Astronomy Group at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research to plan for computerizing data acquisition at their radio telescope using minicomputers. Dr Kohli came over with a couple of colleagues to visit us. I got to visit the thermal generating station at Chembur and later a hydro-electric station in Lonavala.
A few years later, TIFR Radio Astronomers started designing and building their Giant MeterWave Radio Telescope (GMRT), one of the biggest structures I ever got to see being planned. It was a precision structure, and a one-of kind structure for its designers. Tata Consulting Engineers (TCE) had been selected by Prof Gobind Swarup, the Scientist leading the project. TCE was to do some structural engineering for the GMRT. Dr Kohli was the Director in Charge of TCE at that time. TCE was in the early years of using a large computer to do big-time structural engineering. I was in the TIFR Computer Group which was running a large computer (a CDC-3600) which we made available for institutions such as TCE.
So, I had the pleasure of seeing Dr Kohli work as a power engineer, as a high-tech engineering consultant in structural engineering, and as a top-level manager. I had the privilege of being treated as a member of his extended team, and being given privilege to ask the expert himself and to learn from him.
Then came IT revolution which changed the face of India for a few millions of us, besides making a significant contribution to the Indian economy. Dr Kohli, with his unique range of experience and skills took charge of TCS. One small event during his years at TCS is particularly memorable to me. He invited our team at TIFR to play a small role in a project of TCS. We had completed designing a state-of-the-art message switching system using an up-to-date minicomputer and up-to-date software including a high-level programming language. TCS got an order for a message switching system from a multi-national company which was the leading supplier of message switching systems in the world at that time. We made our computer and software available to TCS as development tools for use in this project. For me, what was special was the TCS invitation to give a presentation along with the TCS team to the visiting client team, describing our experience in implementing an up-to-date message switch. Implicit was the understanding that if the TCS team needed to consult us any time, we would be available. The TCS team did not need that consultation but our software development resources played their role.
The Computer Society of India had been founded in 1965. My mentor at TIFR, Prof R Narasimhan was the founding President. Prof V Rajaraman, Gen Balasubramanian, Dr Kohli and Dr PP Gupta were some of the pioneers who played a leading role in setting CSI on the right path. As a young scientist at that time, CSI gave me great opportunities to work with pioneers.
I had written in 2014 an article Growing up with the Computer Society of India! http://obvioustruths.blogspot.com/2014/06/srinivasan-ramani-and-computer-society.html (posted on theoccasion of the Golden Jubilee of CSI). I invite the reader to read this article to learn about my experience of working with Dr Kohli.
Some closing comments: The basis of the IT revolution was the recognition that the skills of Indian professionals were worth a lot on the international market and that Indian Corporates could find a big market abroad for these skills. However, this needed high standards of leadership and commitment to customer interests. When Dr Kohli pitched a fledgling TCS in this arena, very few realized that one day not far into the future India would succeed in a very impressive manner in creating an entirely new industry. An industry that would grow up to rival the whole of agriculture in its contribution to the Indian GDP. The contribution of TCS has been very substantial. Even today, TCS earns over 10% of the revenue earned by the whole of the Indian software industry. In addition, the TCS experience has been valuable to many leaders who went on to found their own IT companies.
Very few engineers have been as successful in their quest as Dr Kohli has been in his.
7-Dec-2020
