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Satyanarayan (Sam) Pitroda is an Indian inventor, entrepreneur, and policy maker, known to many as the Father of the Indian Telecom Revolution. He was born in 1942 in a poor, remote village in rural India, a place with kerosene lamps and no running water. In 1964, he traveled to Chicago to study electrical engineering. Pitroda had never used a telephone before arriving in the US, and by 1980, he was a US citizen and a self-made telecommunications millionaire.

After many years Pitroda visited India and tried to make a phone call to his wife- but couldn't. This experience determined him to return to India and spend nearly a decade with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as leader of an effort to build an Indian information industry and begin the immense task of extending digital telecommunications to every corner of the country, including remote villages, like the one of his birth. Pitroda launched the Center for the Development of Telematics (C-DOT), and served as Advisor to the Prime Minister on Technology Missions related to water, literacy, immunization, oil seeds, telecom, and dairy. He is also the founding Chairman of India’s Telecom Commission.

Pitroda returned to India a second time in 2004 to focus on building knowledge institutions and infrastructure. He founded the National Knowledge Commission and the National Innovation Council, and served as the Advisor to the Prime Minister with rank of a cabinet minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovation, to help democratize information. Pitroda has started several successful businesses as a serial entrepreneur (Wescom Switching, Ionics, MTI, Martek, WorldTel, C-SAM, etc.) in the US and Europe. He holds over 100 global technology patents, over 15 honorary PhD’s, has delivered over 25 global convocation addresses, and has published and lectured widely in the US, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

Early Years

Pitroda grew up in the remote village of Titilagarh, Orissa to a Gujarati family. Titilagarh was exceptionally poor, and none of the village’s 6,000 - 7,000 residents had access to running water, electricity, telephones, or doctors. Satyanarayan was the third of eight children. Neither parent was educated past the fourth grade level, but they would go on to see almost all of their children through high school and university. Pitroda’s father, Gangaram, worked selling nails to British colonials. However, he did not speak English and was humiliated by the language barrier. This made him insistent that his children would be well educated and learn to speak English.

Mahatma Gandhi’s Influence

Pitroda’s parents were both deeply devoted to Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi’s influence and philosophy were always present in their household. Pitroda recalls:

“When I was growing up, Gandhi was always in our midst. I still remember when I was a little kid, six years old, I was playing outside my house, and my father came in and said that Gandhi had died. I didn’t quite understand it. Then everybody in the household had to take a bath, as if someone in the family had died.” -Sam Pitroda

At an early age he (age 9) and his brother (age 12) were sent to Sharda Mandir boarding school in Vallabh Vidyanagar, Gujarat, a school known for its Gandhian teachings. Sam Pitroda has spoken on many occasions about how he feels Gandhian philosophy has influenced his own life and missions.

Education

Sam Pitroda began his schooling at a very young age. At three, he would watch his older sister and brother get ready to go to the village teacher, full of envy. He would put up such a fight every morning that his mother eventually just let him go with the older children. Pitroda recounts, his “early education took place in one-room schools, and most of my classmates had no shoes or books.”

Pitroda studied through university in Baroda, receiving a Bachelor’s (1962) and Master’s Degree (1964) in Physics specializing in electronics from Maharaja Sayajirao University.

Pitroda arrived at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1964, and received a Masters in Electrical Engineering (1966) while working in a physical chemistry lab. He continued part-time PhD coursework for 8 more years at IIT.

Employment

Oak Electric

In 1966, Pitroda began his career designing television tuners.

Victoreen Instruments

In the same year, 1966, he moved on to designing nuclear instruments.

General Telephone & Electronics (GTE)

In 1967, Pitroda got his first job in telecom designing digital switching technology and systems related to Private Automatic Branch Exchanges (PABX), Automatic Call Distributors (ACD), Central Offices (CO), and Tandem Switches for telephone services and equipment. During his time at GTE, Pitroda enjoyed a great deal of success and was responsible for nearly 30 patents.

Wescom Switching, Inc.

Founded by Pitroda in 1974, the company designed, developed, and manufactured digital switching equipment for corporate, airlines, and telco markets. Wescom Switching Inc. was sold to Rockwell International in 1980, after which he served as VP of Rockwell Switching before leaving the company in 1983 to return to India to help build telecom infrastructure.

Electronic Diary Patent

In 1975, Sam Pitroda was issued a patent for the electronic diary. His electronic diary is considered to be one of the earliest examples of handheld computing.

Pitroda reports having the idea for the electronic diary in 1972 after forgetting about inviting a friend over for dinner. Shortly after eating his own dinner, the friend arrived. That night, after he ate a miserable, face-saving second dinner, he brainstormed a solution. The next day, he was designing the electronic diary.

Pitroda claims that after filing a patent for his “dumb idea”, he totally forgot about it. However, after spending many years in India, he realized that everyone was using this diary in the US, manufactured by Toshiba, Sharp, Radio Shack, TI, Hewlett Packard, Casio, and others. Pitroda took the patent infringement case to Cook County Court where the royalty deal was settled.

MTI

In 1978, Pitroda founded MTI, an electronics company manufacturing a full range of hybrid circuits and technically advanced circuit board assembly.

Ionics

In 1981, Pitroda started Ionics to manufacture multilayer printed circuit boards.

Martek

Also in 1981, Martek was founded to manufacture enterprise software, manage materials, MRP and planning on small computers.

Compucards (binary playing cards)

In 1983, Pitroda designed a deck of playing cards based on the binary number system called “Compucards”. The deck contained 64 binary cards. 8 binary numbers, 4 suites, cards with programmers as kings, computers as queens, and software bugs as jokers. The deck could be used to play any classic card game.

Emnet

In 1984, Pitroda founded Emnet which created some of the first home security systems and networks.

Telecom/IT Development in India

“I was a millionaire, and to my own surprise I felt nearly as much guilt as satisfaction. All my life, I had dreamed of wealth and success, but now I had suddenly confronted the fact that I had walked out of India. The sheer immensity of India’s problems, ... the selfishness of my own success so far, all of it weighed on my mind and set me off in pursuit of another American dream: the exploration of a new frontier and challenge. In my case, that challenge was to use telecommunications as an agent of change - a bridge between the First World and the Third.” - Sam Pitroda

In 1981, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had established a high-level committee to review telecom development. Pitroda was lucky enough to secure a meeting with this committee, and they recommended he meet with the Prime Minister. However, when the P.M.’s office only offered him a 10 minute meeting with Mrs. Gandhi, he turned it down. This was almost unheard of. However, Pitroda knew he needed a full hour, and felt that any less would be a waste of both of their time, so he waited.

After eight months, in November of 1981, Sam Pitroda got his hour with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The meeting was held at Indira Gandhi’s official residence. In addition to Mrs. Gandhi, her son Rajiv, and his young associates, nearly the whole cabinet was in attendance.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi listened attentively. Thereafter all ministers were enlisted to learn more about the role of telecom in nation building.

Center for the Development of Telematics (C-DOT)

In 1984, Sam Pitroda with political will and support from Rajiv Gandhi established the Center for Development of Telematics, commonly referred to as C-DOT. He served as Advisor to C-DOT, taking a token salary of only one rupee per year.

The mission of C-DOT was to develop indigenous telecommunications technology to digitize India’s telecom networks and services with focus on young talent, accessibility, rural telecom, local production, and advanced software tools.

The shared vision was that telecom will bring openness, accessibility, connectivity, networking, democratization, decentralization and as a result social transformation by bringing a diverse group of people on a common platform to interact and participate in overall national development.

C-DOT’s mission was to develop a digital switching system suitable to the Indian network in 36 months for 36 million dollars.

This was possible only through political will from young Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and young Indian engineering talent. In an article, Pitroda wrote, “Our engineers were conspicuously young, and they never seemed to sleep or rest. Most had been ready to leave India when this opportunity came along. Now they threw themselves into India’s future and worked with an energy that the underdeveloped world is not commonly supposed to generate.” After three years, C-DOT had delivered exchanges that met India’s specific needs, and could be manufactured in India.

National Technology Missions

In 1987, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi appointed Sam Pitroda Advisor to the Prime Minister on National Technology Missions with the rank of a Minister. Together, Pitroda and Gandhi decided these missions would focus on five critical areas: drinking water, immunizations, literacy, oil seeds, and telecommunications. They later added a sixth: dairy-milk production.

Technology Mission goals

1. Make clean potable water available to 100,000 problem villages in the amount of 40 liters a day per person and 30 liters a day per head of livestock.
2. Immunize 20-million pregnant woman and 20-million children per year.
3. Teach 80-million people ages 15-35 (75% of the adult illiterate) to read and write at the rate of 10-million each year.
4. Increase oilseed production by as much as 18-million tons and reduce, eliminate, or reverse India’s annual 10-billion rupee (one billion dollars in 1987) import bill for edible oils.
5. Increase dairy production from 44- to 61-million metric tons per year over eight years, raise dairy employment and incomes, and expands the number of dairy cooperatives by 42%.
6. Improve service, dependability, and accessibility of telecommunications across the county, including rural areas.

Drinking Water

The drinking water mission identified 100,000 problem villages. Satellite imagery and geohydrological surveys were used to determine where to drill new wells. Over 400 water testing labs were established to establish official standards of quality and quantity. Plants were designed and built for excess iron removal and excess fluoride. The plants were also designed and built for desalination. The mission included an effort to educate people on how to repair broken water pumps. For this, easy to understand repair manuals were prepared and distributed in each of India’s fifteen languages.

Immunizations

The mission was to provide six main vaccines to about 20 million pregnant women and 20 million children every year. In 1987, India had the highest amount of polio in the world. As a result a bold decision was made to manufacture polio vaccine locally and set up nationwide cold chain equipment.

25 years later, in 2013, India was declared polio-free. At the same time India now is the largest producer of vaccines in the world.

Literacy

In 1987, India’s literacy rate was below 40%. To address this population it was important to improve female literacy and reduce infant mortality by enhancing the vaccination program.

The mission had the dual focus of motivating people (adults in particular) to learn, and providing dust-free chalk, plastic blackboards, solar lamps, and substantial support of a large number of voluntary agencies and activists nationwide.

In 1999, UNESCO’S NOMA Literacy Prize was awarded to the Technology Mission literacy program.

Oilseeds (Edible Oils)

In 1987, India was importing one billion dollars of cooking oils each year, when large portions of Indian land including wasteland are well suited to growing oil crops. Farmers did not grow these crops because they found other crops were more profitable. This was causing India costly economic situation. Their goal was to make farmers see the benefits of planting oilseeds.

Dr. Kurian, head of National Dairy Development, who handled buffer stocks, described his plan as such: “We move into areas where there is gross exploitation and try to restructure the marketing system so that the small producer is not fleeced by middlemen or the oil kings.”

Once major interventions on oil were complete, India was exporting oil cakes at the rate of 600 million per year and was on the way to achieve self-sufficiency in edible oils. However, it required sustainable efforts to assure ongoing success.

Telecommunication

The official goal of the telecom mission was to improve accessibility and services of telecommunications across the county, including rural areas. This was to be achieved through indigenous development, local young talent, rural telecom, digital switching networks, local manufacturing, and privatization. It also required change in the planning process, liberalization, privatization, and technology upgradation.

Dairy

The goal of the dairy mission was to develop and implement technologies to improve breeding, animal health, and fodder and milk production.

Today, India is the number one producer of milk in the world.

The Telecom Commission

With political will from Rajiv Gandhi, the Telecom Commission was established in 1989. Pitroda served as the Commission’s founding Chairman. Pitroda developed a new model for public telephones, using a system of phone owners/managers, rather than coin operated machines. Called STD/PCOs, or subscriber trunk dialing/public call offices, the yellow signs for these phones became iconic in India. It improved access substantially and used C-DOT exchanges for almost 20 million lines nationwide. The Commission focused on privatization, strategic planning, labor reforms, indigenous products from C-DOT and GSM standards for mobile phones.

In early 1980’s, India had 2 million telephones for approximately 800 million people and the telecom industry was predominantly owned by the government. Today, India has over one billion mobile phones for 1.3 billion people and a thriving private sector. Now India is a country of a connected billion.

Return to Chicago

On the night of May 21st, 1991, Pitroda received a phone call bearing the news that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had been killed by a suicide bomber. The death of his political ally and close friend took a lot of the heart and soul out of Sam Pitroda.

After years of taking only a token salary of one rupee a year, living off his own money, Pitroda realized he was completely broke. Devastated by the death of Rajiv Gandhi, he decided to return to Chicago to put his personal life back together. Since he has relinquished his US nationality he has to return to the US on a tourist visa. However, he could not work on a tourist visa. But he needed to earn to pay for his family and his two kids’ college fees. Electronic diary patent royalties saved his day.

The 1990’s in the United States

WorldTel

In 1995, an initiative lead by Pitroda at the Advisory Council with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Geneva officially launched WorldTel, a telecom development fund. WorldTel’s mission was to support privately funded telecom projects in nations where the need was greatest. According to the official ITU launch announcement, “WorldTel hopes to break the vicious cycle that exists in developing countries.” WorldTel investors were AIG, GE, and Intel. Pitroda was named WorldTel’s first Chairman and CEO in 1995.

C-SAM, Inc.

In 1994, Sam Pitroda filed for his first mobile wallet patent, which he continued to improve upon over the years. It would later be known as the “OneWallet”. In 1998, C-SAM was founded in Chicago by Pitroda.

C-SAM offered one of the world’s earliest mobile wallet platforms. C-SAM began small, but by 2014, had offices in Tokyo, Singapore, Baroda (India), Pune (India), Graz (Austria), as well as Chicago with around 300 people.

In February 2014, C-SAM was acquired by MasterCard. In a press release, MasterCard announced that they intend to speed development and deployment of mobile wallets and payment solutions globally, including the launch of its MasterPass. The two companies have been in a global strategic partnership since December 2012.

Second Return to India

In 2004, Sam Pitroda returned to India with his wife to campaign for the Congress Party. His message was that Congress has accomplished a great deal in Rajiv Gandhi’s era and thereafter, in privatization, globalization, technology, development, services, etc. They ended the campaign victorious, and Pitroda’s engagement in India increased substantially.

National Advisory Council

In June 2004, India’s first National Advisory Council was established under the leadership of Mrs. Sonia Gandhi. Sam Pitroda was invited to serve as a member. According to the office of the Prime Minister, “The task of the National Advisory Council is to provide inputs in the formulation of policy. ... The NAC will have a special focus on social policy and the rights of disadvantaged groups… The NAC comprises distinguished professionals drawn from diverse fields of development activity who serve in their individual capacities.”

National Knowledge Commission

In December 2004, Pitroda proposed the idea of a knowledge commission to Prime Minister Singh. On June 13, 2005, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) was officially formed as a high level advisory body to the Prime Minister with the objective of transforming India’s knowledge institutions and infrastructure. Their objective included both radically improving existing systems of knowledge and creating avenues for generating new forms of knowledge to help create knowledge based society in the 21st century.

The NKC consisted of distinguished national leaders from industry, academic, and scientific communities to focus on access, concepts, creation, applications, and services related to knowledge.

The National Knowledge Commission released a series of recommendations to the Prime Minister each year from 2006-2009. By the time the NKC ended they had made around 300 recommendations on 27 subjects such as libraries, portals, schools, vocation education, higher education, translations, innovation, distance learning, open courseware, knowledge networks, e-governance, etc. Although the NKC has officially ended, many of their recommendations are currently being implemented at the Central and State levels.

Sam Pitroda served as the Chairman for the NKC during the Commissions entire tenure.

Advisor on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovation

Pitroda was appointed Advisor to the Prime Minister on Public Information and Infrastructure (PIII) with the rank of a cabinet minister. The Office of Advisor on PIII focused on reviewing, developing, and scaling public information infrastructure to improve productivity, efficiency and quality of the systems and processes to deliver public services. They sought to create a Roadmap for a Decade of Innovation to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The PIII included the National Knowledge Network, fiber optic cable to 250,000 Panchayats, National GIS, application platforms for universities, computerization of courts, police, prisons, and digital delivery of public services.

National Innovation Council

The National Innovation Council was established with 17 distinguished people to formulate a Roadmap for Innovation for 2010-2020, and create a framework for:

• Evolving an Indian model of innovation, with focus on inclusive growth
• Delineating policy initiatives within the Government, required to spur innovation
• Developing and championing innovation attitudes and approaches
• Creating appropriate eco-systems and environment to foster inclusive innovation
• Exploring new strategies and alternatives for innovations and collaborations
• Identifying ways and means to scale and sustain innovations
• Encouraging Central and State Governments to innovate
• Encouraging universities and R&D institutions to innovate
• Facilitating innovations by SMEs
• Encouraging all important sectors of the economy to innovate
• Encouraging innovation in public service delivery
• Encouraging multi-disciplinary and globally competitive approaches for innovations

Other

Pitroda also served as chairman of a committee to modernize Indian Railways, a committee to reform public broadcast, and a task force on smart grid system. He also led the effort to jointly develop an Open Government Platform with the White House resulting from President Obama’s visit to India.

Art

Painting

Sam Pitroda is also an artist who paints abstract and colorful oil and acrylic paintings. His work has recently (2014) been shown in Paris, France, Vienna, Austria and Singapore as part of a solo exhibition. Pitroda’s work was earlier seen on exhibition in London in 2006 and in Chicago in 2003.

Doodles

Pitroda also constantly doodles, whenever he finds a free moment. To date his collection includes more than five thousand doodles collected over a period of 30 years.

On his website, Pitroda says, “I began experimenting with art in my childhood, finding that it complemented my math and science background. I have always enjoyed geometry, and to me, painting became an extension of this - an exploration of lines, shapes, forms and both symmetry and asymmetry.”

Non-Profit/Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Board of Directors

Sam Pitroda currently chairs five major NGOs.

Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions

The first is the Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions founded in 1990 with Darshan Shankar. It has now turned into the Institute of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology near Bangalore in India. The foundation promotes Ayurveda, India's traditional medicinal knowledge. Today, FRLHT has over 200 scientists and professionals on 19-acres campus and has documented over 7,000 herbal medicinal plants. It also has over 100 herbal medicine gardens, approximately 500 acres each.

The Global Knowledge Initiative

In 2009, Sam Pitroda founded The Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI) along with Nina Fedoroff and Sara Farley in Washington, DC as a non-profit organization with a mission to forge, optimize, and sustain knowledge partnerships between the people and institutions of higher education and research around the world. They build and support purpose-driven networks to solve shared challenges in science, technology, and innovation. They have worked in countries including Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Middle East, North Africa and more.

India Food Banking Network

In 2010, Pitroda established the India Food Banking Network (IFBN) to create a network of Food Banks in India to systematically capture and distribute food to empower and support the food security mission in India. Today, IFBN has food banks in Delhi, Gurgaon, and Noida with plans to expand into Mumbai, Bangalore, Calcutta, and others.

People for Global Transformation

People for Global Transformation was launched in 2012 along with Mr. Hubert Vedrine, France’s former Chief of Staff for President Mitterrand. PGT is a global think tank that brings together an interdisciplinary group of 15 leading voices from across the globe to help shape the 21st century’s discourse on development and governance, and provide innovative policy recommendations. The group particularly endeavors to generate greater transversal thinking on the transformational potential of technology and its consequences for all.

Action For India

Also in 2012, Pitroda founded Action For India to help social innovators in India overcome barriers to scale and achieve greater impact at the Bottom of the Economic Pyramid. AFI connects social innovators with impact investors, mentors, technology resources, government contacts and local partners. AFI is headquartered in New Delhi, India and has a chapter in Silicon Valley, California.

Chairman & Board of Directors

In addition to these five NGOs, Sam Pitroda is also:

• Founding commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission
• Chairman of the m-Powering Development Initiative of the ITU in Geneva
• Chairman of the Vikram A. Sarabhai Community Science Centre
• Board Member of the World Wide Web Foundation
• Board Member of the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago

Books

All books are available for free on Sam Pitroda's personal website.

Books by Sam Pitroda

• IEEE Transactions on Communications, Special Publication on Telecommunication in Developing Countries, Volume COM-24, Number 7, July 1976
• Exploding Freedom: Roots in Technology, Allied Publishers Limited, 1993
• Foundation for the Future: Human Resource Development, Commonwealth Secretariat, 1993
• Development of Gujarat: People’s Perceptions, Sardar Patel Institute of Economic and Social Research, Ahmedabad, 1997
• Vision, Values, & Velocity, Silicon India, 2001
• March of Mobile Money: The Future of Lifestyle Management, Harper Collins, 2010

Pitroda also holds a collection of over 40 years of his personal daily diaries and workbooks.

Books about Sam Pitroda

• Sam Pitroda: A Biography, by Mayank Chhaya, Konark Publishers Pvt Ltd, 1992

The biography of Sam Pitroda by Mayank Chhaya was on the best seller list in India.

Awards

• World Telecommunication and Information Society Award, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 2011, for his outstanding contribution to improving life in rural communities through information and communication technologies. Sam Pitroda is the first Indian to receive this prestigious award
• Award for Public Service in the Field of Telecommunications, IEEE Communications Society, 2007, for exceptional contributions in developing indigenous systems and telecommunications infrastructure in India
• Padma Bhushan, Government of India, 2009, for his contribution to science and engineering
• International Engineering Consortium Fellow Award, 2000, in admiration and recognition of exceptional achievements and service to the information industry
• Business Process Innovation Award, The Economist, 2006
• Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration and Management Services, 2000, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to telecommunication and harnessing it for social and economic transformation of developing countries
• Fellow India Computer Society
• Fellow All India Management Association
• Dataquest Lifetime Achievement Award
• National Citizen’s Award
• Bhashi Award for science and technology
• Alumni Leadership Award, Illinois Institute of Technology

Honorary PhD's

Sam Pitroda has many honorary PhD's some of which include:

• Pune University
• Symbiosis University
• Andhra University
• Downing College
• University of Illinois – Chicago
• Lester University – UK
• Polly – NY University
• Shivaji University
• HIHT University
• TERI University
• University of Toronto
• University of Mysore

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sam Pitroda.

• Official website

India Links

• National Innovation Council
• Global Innovation Roundtable
• National Knowledge Commission
• Open Government Platform (OGPL)
• Modernization of Indian Railways
• India Smart Grid Task Force
• Tod Fod Jod

Portals

• Gandhi Heritage Portal
• National Innovation Portal
• India Biodiversity Portal
• India Environment Portal
• Teachers of India
• India Energy Portal
• India Water Portal

Non-Profits

• Institute of TransDisciplinary Health Sciences & Technology
• The Global Knowledge Initiative
• People for Global Transformation
• India Food Banking Network
• Action for India
• Vikram A. Sarabhai Community Science Center

Global Projects

• The Broadband Commission
• M-Powering Development Initiative
• The World Wide Web Foundation

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