RTN. Pranay Vakil In Conversation With Harish Mehta, Author Of The Maverick Effect
What was your journey to NASSCOM?
In 1975-’76, we decided to come back to India to be closer to family. This was during the Emergency. I tried to be with my father in his business as it wasn’t in a good shape, and neither was my father-in-law’s. My dreams of starting a business in those areas evaporated.
One of my cousins recommended I return to the US. He said, ‘Even today, the US is a land of honey and money. While, in India, you will not know the input cost of your customer. You won’t know if your competitor is doing customs chori (thievery), excise chori or Income Tax chori.’
So, I ended up in technology, hoping it will not jump instructions. I met Sharu Rangnekar who said, ‘Welcome Mr. Mehta, you will be a First-Class citizen in a Second-Class country with a Third-Class administration and it’s our job to fix it.’
I started a software business and came to understand that what I could do in the US, I can do from India. But that communication pipe was not available. Over time, I found hundreds of regulations for the hardware industry that were applied to the software industry. So, when we had to send the date, we would put it on a floppy and then export.
The customs officer would say he needed to see what was in there, so he asked for the floppy, and he stapled it. That was their knowledge.
There was excise duty on software. We challenged Reddy and convinced him that there was no logic in putting an excise on developing services. We have 26,000 laws which make people guilty. The outsourcing market is huge, but the accessible market is very small. So came the idea of an organisation. That is how NASSCOM was born.
I am sure the book didn’t happen overnight. What was your inspiration?
I was tempted to write the book; it was a massive effort. When we started NASSCOM in 1988, India was bankrupt, India was a third-world country, that was the status. And today India is a global tech powerhouse. How? It was the hard work put in by the industry. We employ 5.3 million engineers of which 1.5 million are women. This is another revolution in itself.
How did you get the idea for NASSCOM and how was it so successful?
We did not have NASSCOM in mind when we started. We knew the outsourcing market and we knew the challenges. The middle-class entrepreneurial value helped to build it as an independent neutral platform. It needed to be a culture where everyone is comfortable to speak up and balance it. We needed to invest time, we used to have training programmes then to encourage people to be entrepreneurs. Democratising opportunities was one of the key things. It is a non-profit volunteering. We didn’t want this platform to be abused. We said we will take 80% of the top clients.
There is great confusion about high-tech, metaverse, cloud computing. What is this?
The common thread is software. Metaverse is entering the virtual world. It is all a mimic to see how the brain works. India is an unstoppable engine with an extremely bright future. Manpower is a boon.
Is 5G going to make a difference?
It is a phenomenal difference. It’s how the mobile, car, and house made a difference in your life.
How do you see privacy?
It is enough but it needs to start at an engineering level and a lot has to be done. Until that happens, it is tough.
One message you would want to give to the nation?
There was a time when China wanted to compete with India and beat India. They appointed Foresters and they told China that you can’t beat India till you build a NASSCOM equivalent association. That’s what it is. It is very different. So, this model should be replicated, consensus driven and working together with a sense of ownership.
ROTARIANS ASK
What does India need to do to maintain its status as a global IT powerhouse?
Hopefully, the government will not throw us in a spin, and more and more people will join the force.
How come Indian industry hasn’t created an FB or an original app?
It’s like asking if I own an airline why don’t I build aircrafts. There are steps, there are efforts; in the next five years, it could happen.
