Education, Culture, and the Making of a Technologist

Ajai Chowdhry’s schooling began in Hindi-medium institutions, but the trajectory soon shifted. With a crash course in English, he was admitted to Christchurch School, laying the foundation for his higher studies. Eventually, he joined Jabalpur Engineering College, India’s first telecommunications engineering institution, where he studied electronics and telecommunications. The discipline ignited his fascination with circuits, systems, and the possibilities of a connected world.

Yet Ajai Chowdhry’s upbringing was never narrowly technical. His father was a poet, his mother and sister trained singers, and the home was filled with music and art. Ajai Chowdhry himself played the tabla by mouth, often accompanying his sister’s singing. Sports too played an important role—he was a serious player of table tennis, badminton, and tennis. Surrounded by siblings who pursued science, medicine, and literature, Ajai Chowdhry absorbed a multidimensional worldview that blended precision with creativity.

This eclectic environment shaped not just a technologist but a whole person. When the time came to make career choices, Ajai Chowdhry would draw on both his engineering training and his appreciation for human connections—a combination that would later explain why, against all expectations, he chose to pursue a career in sales rather than settle into the safe confines of a public-sector engineering job.

The Dawn of India’s Hardware Industry: Seeds Sown in the Post-Independence Era

India’s tryst with computing began in 1955 with the arrival of the HEC-2M at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Initially a research and statistical tool, it seeded early skills in programming, maintenance, and system design. Through the 1960s, electronics work remained largely confined to defense, space, and telecommunications—driven by laboratories such as ISRO and the Defense Electronics Research Laboratory.

The 1970s marked a formative yet constrained phase for India’s IT hardware industry, spanning early computers, minicomputers, and electronic components. Operating under the License Raj’s regulatory grip and the push for self-reliance, the sector began shifting from near-total import dependence to modest indigenous production. Largely state-driven, this era laid the groundwork for the industry’s expansion in the 1980s.

A decisive policy push came in 1963 with the Bhabha Committee, followed by the Sarabhai Committee, which emphasized building indigenous capacity in computers and components. Their recommendations led to the creation of the Department of Electronics (DoE) in 1970 and the Electronics Commission in 1971, signaling the government’s long-term commitment to self-reliance. These institutions were hailed as the ‘temples of modern India,’ echoing Nehru’s 1950s vision and brought to life in the 1970s with the first Electronics Commission under MGK Menon. The Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), established in 1967, emerged as the flagship public-sector manufacturer, alongside Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).

Yet the state-led strategy soon revealed its limitations. ECIL catered largely to government demand, struggled to compete on cost and technology, and earned a reputation for being sluggish and unmarket-oriented. By the mid-1970s, it was clear that the public sector alone could not meet India’s computing needs, opening the door for private players such as Hindustan Computers Limited (HCL).

Dhar and Joseph (2019) present a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of India’s information technology (IT) and information technology-enabled services (ITES) sectors in their aptly titled study, India’s Information Technology Industry: A Tale of Two Halves.

IBM’s Exit and a Market Opportunity

The second major break point came in 1978. Following the Congress party’s defeat in 1977, the new government adopted a harder stance toward multinationals. IBM, which had been refurbishing obsolete 1401 machines in India, was asked to dilute its equity, take on an Indian partner, and manufacture the IBM 360 series domestically. When IBM refused, it shut down operations in India in 1978.

This exit marked a turning point. The government, now in need of indigenous alternatives, opened the doors for Indian companies to step into the void. A wave of private initiatives followed, building minicomputers with imported microprocessors and operating systems like UNIX. The stage was set for the birth of a new Indian computing enterprise.

From Engineering to Enterprise: Ajai Chowdhry and the Birth of India’s Product Revolution

ECIL, India’s flagship computer maker of the 1970s, became a cautionary tale. As Rajaraman noted, it worked “more like a cottage industry,” crippled by poor sales efforts and unable to find markets beyond government departments. The lesson was stark: without sales and marketing muscle, even the best technology would struggle to survive.

Ajai Chowdhry understood this instinctively. Fresh out of engineering college, he surprised everyone by refusing the well-trodden path of a public-sector job. Influenced by his elder brother, he saw the real battlefield lay not only in designing machines but in convincing people to buy them. While his classmates quickly landed engineering posts, Ajai Chowdhry waited—months—holding out for a sales role. His patience paid off when, in a single week, he received three offers. He chose DCM Data Products, a decision that would change the course of his life.

At DCM, Ajai Chowdhry learned to bridge two worlds: the precision of engineering and the persuasion of sales. More importantly, it was there that he met the colleagues who would later join him in founding HCL—a company that redefined India’s hardware story by doing what ECIL could not: building products and selling them to real markets.

That was the moment Ajai Chowdhry chose a different path—one that shaped his destiny and helped lay the foundation for India’s long journey toward becoming a true product nation.

HCL: A Startup Before Startups

The mid-1970s marked the tentative privatization of India’s hardware industry. Chowdhry and his colleagues recognized ECIL’s flaws: superior technology alone wasn’t enough without robust sales.

In 1976, Ajai Chowdhry and five DCM colleagues decided to strike out on their own. Their dream was audacious: to build India’s first microcomputer company at a time when “startup,” “venture capital,” and “angel investors” were alien concepts in the Indian lexicon.

With a modest pool of ₹1.86 lakhs and a joint venture with the Uttar Pradesh government (which took 26% equity in return for a license), they founded Hindustan Computers Limited (HCL).

The odds were stacked against them. Import restrictions meant critical components had to be sourced creatively; policies were rigid; and there was no ecosystem of investors or mentors to lean on. Yet, driven by belief in the transformative potential of microprocessors, they persevered.

HCL began with calculators and scientific computers but quickly expanded to commercial systems. Within a decade, it was India’s leading computer company—outpacing lumbering public-sector rivals like ECIL and proving that private initiative could succeed where state enterprises stumbled.

HCL was more than a business triumph—it was a breakthrough in mindset. It proved that Indian entrepreneurs could build, sell, and scale products in an environment seemingly designed to hold them back. Starting with calculators and scientific computers, HCL disrupted the market, becoming India’s top computer firm within a decade.

Policy Crossroads: The 1980s Shift

The 1980s were a pivotal decade for India’s electronics industry. After years of tight regulation and state monopolies, the government began to experiment with policies that nudged private enterprise into the sector. Two landmark initiatives—the New Electronics Policy (NEP) and the New Computer Policy (NCP) of 1984—opened the doors to joint ventures, eased import restrictions, and encouraged entrepreneurship. In the 1980s, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi envisioned high technology as a lever for poverty reduction, through increased production and better quality.

Institutions such as C-DOT (Centre for Development of Telematics) and C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) were established to build national capabilities in telecommunications and supercomputing. Foreign collaborations multiplied—from just 16 in 1977 to more than 200 by the mid-1980s—primarily with the U.S., Japan, West Germany, and the UK.

For the first time, there was a sense that India might catch up with the global technology frontier. Yet, these gains were uneven. While software and IT services began to show explosive potential, hardware remained constrained, struggling to scale up in cost and quality.

Supercomputing and National Pride

The late 1980s brought one of India’s most dramatic moments in technology policy. When the U.S. and Japan denied India access to high-performance supercomputers, the government responded by funding C-DAC with ₹300 million to develop indigenous systems.

The result was the Param supercomputer, launched in 1991 and ranked among the world’s fastest at the time. It was a stunning achievement—a symbol of India’s ability to innovate under pressure and leapfrog technological barriers.

Yet, as Ajai Chowdhry points out, this brilliance was not replicated across the broader hardware sector. “We proved we could do it,” he notes, “but we didn’t build the ecosystem around it.” Supercomputing became an island of excellence rather than a catalyst for industry-wide transformation.

Global Ambitions and Hard Realities of HCL

The 1980s brought transformative policies that accelerated India’s electronics sector. By the late 1980s, HCL had established itself as India’s leading computer company. The natural next step was to go global. Encouraged by McKinsey and buoyed by early successes, HCL ventured abroad—first to Singapore, and later to Silicon Valley. Orders came in, including significant contracts in the U.S.

But regulatory barriers proved formidable. Certification requirements that HCL’s hardware could not meet in time, combined with the collapse of a large order following a client acquisition, derailed the expansion. Meanwhile, mounting loans at home put pressure on the company. Reluctantly, HCL pivoted from hardware to software, laying the foundation for what would become a $14 billion global enterprise.

Ajai Chowdhry looks back at this moment with mixed feelings: pride in HCL’s resilience, but regret at the larger lost opportunity. “We showed we could compete,” he recalls, “but the environment—policy, finance, certification—was not supportive. India lost the chance to build global champions in hardware.”

The Liberalization Era: Opening the Gates

The watershed year of 1991 ushered in sweeping economic reforms. Industrial licensing was abolished, barriers to foreign investment were relaxed, and tariffs on IT products were gradually lowered. These changes dramatically expanded opportunities for software services, enabling Indian companies to tap global markets just as demand for outsourcing surged.

Hardware, however, faced a more challenging path. While reforms attracted multinational companies and encouraged telecom manufacturing, foreign direct investment (FDI) in electronics hardware remained modest. In contrast, the software and IT services sector captured nearly 14% of total FDI inflows between 2003 and 2009, with over 50% of FDI in R&D directed toward software rather than hardware.

Majumdar (2010) analyzed the effects of liberalization on India’s electronics hardware industry from 1993–2004, testing World Bank predictions that reforms would boost competition, productivity, and R&D. She concluded that productivity stagnated, as firms favored importing technology over domestic innovation, limiting technological progress. Similarly, Chaudhuri (1995) argued that while liberalization increased partnerships and market entry, it did little to advance indigenous technological capabilities, as firms relied heavily on imported technologies. He lamented that Indian enterprises were becoming less R&D oriented, giving rise to a ‘kit-culture.’ Heeks (1995) also cautioned that import liberalization alone cannot foster local production capabilities; some protection is necessary to nurture domestic innovation.

In contrast, India’s software industry emerged as a cornerstone of its growth story. Mistree (2019) notes that, resilient even as other sectors lagged, the software boom was shaped decisively by state support. In 1984, Rajiv Gandhi pivoted computer policy toward the private sector, actively promoting computing-related industries. Far from thriving despite government action, the software sector benefited from deliberate policy support, becoming one of India’s most successful industries.

The imbalance was stark: India was rapidly emerging as a global software hub, even as its hardware ambitions lagged behind.

The WTO and the Hardware Collapse

A turning point came with the Information Technology Agreement (ITA-1) under the World Trade Organization in 1997, when India committed to eliminating import duties on IT hardware by 2005. While the intention was integration into global value chains, the outcome proved devastating for domestic manufacturers.

In March 1997, India joined ITA-1, committing to remove tariffs on 217 IT products, including semiconductors, computers, and telecom equipment, by 2005. Coming shortly after India’s 1996 electronics sector liberalization, this positioned the country as one of the most ambitious reformers among the signatories (USITC).

The immediate impact was dramatic. Electronics imports grew 18% annually from 1997 to 2000, accelerating to 38% per year between 2001 and 2005, far outpacing domestic production. India’s average tariff on ITA-1 products fell from 37.8% in 1997 to nearly zero by 2005 (Kallummal, 2012). This rapid reduction exposed the nascent domestic hardware industry to a surge of low-cost imports from East Asian countries with established supply chains. By 2011, imports accounted for 63.6% of India’s total electronics consumption, with component import dependence at 51%, contributing to a trade deficit in ITA products of roughly $18 billion—making electronics the third-largest contributor to India’s current-account deficit after oil and gold (Exim Bank).

A major structural flaw was the “inverted duty structure” (IDS): finished products entered duty-free, while intermediate components and raw materials faced effective duties up to 14.7%. This inflated costs for domestic assemblers by 30–40%, rendering Indian hardware uncompetitive against global oligopolies (Mehta & Sharma, 2024). By 2013, four multinational corporations controlled 57% of the PC market, three dominated 65% of smartphones, and four firms held over 90% of the telecom gear market in India.

Other countries, such as China and Brazil, imposed safeguards to protect domestic industries. India, by contrast, dismantled tariff protections prematurely. Imported products flooded the market, and domestic manufacturing, already fragile, collapsed.

A rethink is now underway, prompting Parliament to advocate bilateral and multilateral trade agreements that safeguard national interests. For Ajai Chowdhry, this represents one of India’s great missed opportunities: “We surrendered too soon,” he reflects. “Instead of nurturing our hardware ecosystem, we dismantled it just as it needed protection.”

Two Halves of the IT Story

As Dhar and Joseph observe, India’s IT trajectory unfolded in two markedly unequal halves. The software and IT-enabled services sector, supported by global demand, diaspora linkages, and private entrepreneurial initiative, grew into a $200+ billion industry. In contrast, the hardware sector, though backed by early state initiatives, remained import-dependent and under-invested. While software effectively “walked away with the cherry on the top,” hardware was weighed down by a surge in imports, policy asymmetries, and structural weaknesses that prevented it from achieving comparable scale.

Mathur (2006) analyzes the growth of India’s IT industry, emphasizing the pivotal role of government policy since the 1980s alongside factors such as government–diaspora linkages, private initiatives, software technology parks, industry clustering, and public–private partnerships.

HCL itself embodied this duality. Having pioneered indigenous hardware, it eventually pivoted toward software and services, building a $14 billion business. It was a pragmatic shift, but one that underlined the structural disadvantages faced by Indian hardware entrepreneurs.

Missed Opportunities

Looking back, Ajai Chowdhry identifies a series of squandered chances:

• Semiconductors: As early as 1987, India fabricated 800nm chips—only a few years behind global leaders. But insufficient funding and lack of ecosystem support meant the effort never scaled. Rebuffed partnerships with Intel and TSMC in the 1990s and 2000s left India importing 100% of its chips.
• Mobile revolution: In the 2000s, while Vietnam seized opportunities in handset assembly, India lagged, missing out on billions in exports and jobs.
• ITA-1 fallout: By eliminating tariffs without reciprocal advantages, India eroded its domestic base.
• COVID-era demand: When remote work surged in 2020, 40% of Indian workers lacked adequate IT hardware, exposing the consequences of decades of underinvestment.

Each lapse, Ajai Chowdhry emphasizes, was not just about lost revenue but about jobs, skills, and technological sovereignty.

The Resurgence: Make in India and PLI

The tide began to shift after 2014, when the Make in India initiative put manufacturing at the center of national strategy. Electronics production surged from $21.8 billion in FY2015 to $129.9 billion in FY2025—a sixfold leap. Exports climbed from $4.4 billion to $37.6 billion in the same period.

Key to this resurgence was the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, launched in 2020. By offering subsidies tied to output, it attracted global giants like Apple, Samsung, and Foxconn, who began shifting parts of their supply chains from China to India. By 2025, India was producing 10–15% of the world’s iPhones, an achievement unthinkable a decade earlier.

The momentum extended to semiconductors. Through the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), three fabrication plants (fabs) were approved by mid-2025, marking India’s most serious push yet into chip manufacturing. Domestic electronics production reached $101 billion in FY2023, driven largely by mobile phones (70% of output), but also by emerging sectors like EVs and IoT.

Challenges Along the Way

The “Make in India” campaign has delivered mixed results. It succeeded in attracting substantial Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), boosting sectors such as electronics and defense, and improving India’s ease of doing business ranking. Yet it has fallen short of its job creation and manufacturing GDP targets, hampered by persistent challenges in infrastructure, skilled labor, and policy execution. Sustainability remains a concern, with heavy reliance on foreign investment and a tilt toward capital-intensive automation limiting domestic job growth. Manufacturing’s share of GDP has slipped back to 17.3%, roughly where it stood before the initiative.

The World Bank, in its latest India Development Update, underscored India’s continued dependence on services—contrasting sharply with China and Brazil, where 80–90% of exports are goods. While global majors such as Foxconn (iPhones), Micron, and Samsung have begun shifting supply chains to India as part of the “China plus one” strategy, the scale of investment remains modest. After a decade of effort, manufacturing’s share of GDP has remained largely stagnant, underscoring the elusive nature of India’s industrial transformation.

Despite the resurgence, success is far from guaranteed. India’s hardware industry continues to face structural hurdles:

• Import dependence: 70–80% of critical components—semiconductors, displays, passive elements—are still imported.
• High costs: Manufacturing expenses in India are 10–20% higher than in China, Vietnam, or Mexico, due to logistics, energy, and labor inefficiencies.
• Infrastructure gaps: Customs delays, unreliable power, and slow port clearances hamper competitiveness.
• Talent shortages: Despite producing 1.5 million engineers annually, only a fraction are hardware-specialized, leaving gaps in VLSI, chip design, and automation.
• Low R&D spending: At 0.7% of GDP, India lags behind global leaders in investing in innovation.

Ajai Chowdhry is candid about these hurdles but sees them as opportunities for course correction. “We cannot afford complacency,” he insists. “If we want to be a product nation, we must double down on design, R&D, and skills—not just assembly.”

Toward a Resilient Future

Despite the difficulties, Ajai Chowdhry remains optimistic. With government commitment, global supply chain diversification, and a demographic dividend, India has a rare window of opportunity. If nurtured well, the sector could reach $300 billion in annual output by 2030 and establish India as a global electronics hub.

The critical question, he notes, is whether India will learn from past mistakes—whether the missed opportunities of semiconductors and mobile assembly will become lessons for the future rather than recurring patterns.

Beyond HCL: Education and the Joy of Giving Back

Having stepped away from HCL’s day-to-day operations, Ajai Chowdhry did not retreat into retirement. Instead, he turned his energies toward education and philanthropy—domains he considers essential for shaping India’s future.

He chaired boards at IITs and played a pivotal role in establishing Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), which were designed to bridge the gap between academia and industry. Always the innovator, Ajai Chowdhry pushed for curricula that went beyond narrow technical specializations. One of his signature contributions was the idea of “fractals”—short, intensive courses in arts, humanities, and sciences designed to broaden the horizons of engineering students. His conviction was simple: India needed graduates who were not just coders or engineers, but well-rounded thinkers capable of creativity and leadership.

Ajai Chowdhry’s commitment to inclusivity also led him to establish the Aspire Scholarship, which funds the education of underprivileged students in IITs and premier engineering colleges. For him, scholarships were not just financial aid but investments in potential—an expression of his lifelong belief that aspiration must not be constrained by circumstance.

Philanthropy and Social Causes

Education was only one channel of Ajai Chowdhry’s philanthropy. Through initiatives like the Nudge Institute, the SaveLife Foundation, and the Population Foundation of India, he has engaged in causes ranging from poverty alleviation to road safety and public health.

These efforts reflect a continuity with his broader philosophy: technology and business success must be coupled with social responsibility. For Ajai Chowdhry, giving back is not an afterthought; it is part of the same aspiration that drove him to build HCL.

EPIC Foundation: Toward a Product Nation

In recent years, Ajai Chowdhry has intensified his efforts to transform India into a “product nation” through the EPIC Foundation, which he co-founded with industry veteran Arjun Malhotra, a fellow HCL co-founder. Guided by the conviction that India possesses the capability to design, develop, and manufacture world-class electronics, the Foundation has undertaken bold initiatives to revive the country’s electronics manufacturing and design ecosystem. Its strategy combines advocacy, advisory, and strategic partnerships aimed at fostering indigenous innovation and strengthening domestic capacity.

EPIC’s vision is to build a robust hardware ecosystem with strategic autonomy, fueling economic growth, creating high-value jobs, and positioning India at the forefront of global innovation.

EPIC operates on multiple fronts:

• Supporting startups with mentoring and resources.
• Advising governments on policy frameworks for electronics.
• Designing reference products that can serve as models for Indian manufacturers.

Run with the help of volunteers and industry experts, EPIC embodies Ajai Chowdhry’s vision of shifting India from a services mindset to a design and product mindset. In many ways, it is the institutionalization of lessons learned over decades—an attempt to ensure that future entrepreneurs face fewer barriers than he and his peers did in the 1970s and 1980s.

Leading the Quantum Mission

If EPIC looks to the past and present, Ajai Chowdhry’s latest role gazes squarely into the future. Today, he chairs the Governing Board of  India’s National Quantum Mission, a ₹6,000 crore initiative launched in 2023.

The mission aims to build indigenous capabilities in:

• Quantum computing
• Quantum communication
• Quantum sensors
• Advanced materials

With over 700 scientists involved and funding mechanisms to support quantum-focused startups, it is one of the most ambitious science and technology programs in India’s history.

Ajai Chowdhry is candid about the challenges. Quantum is a high-stakes, high-complexity domain, and the timelines are demanding. But he sees in this mission a historic opportunity for India to leapfrog into frontier technology leadership, much as it did in software decades earlier.

“We cannot miss this bus,” he insists. “Quantum is where the future of computing lies. If we aspire to be a product nation, we must lead in frontier technologies, not follow.”

Aspire: A Personal Philosophy

If Ajai Chowdhry Chowdhry’s journey could be distilled into a single word, it would be Aspire. Not coincidentally, it is also the title of his book.

Aspiration, he says, has always mattered more than resources. He often recalls a maxim from his mentor, C.K. Prahalad: A > R — Aspiration is greater than Resources. From the early days of HCL—launched with just ₹1.86 lakhs—to his leadership of a $14 billion software enterprise, this equation has defined Ajai Chowdhry’s life.

For him, success is not measured merely by profits or legacy. What matters is self-actualization—the pursuit of passions across technology, music, education, and philanthropy. Whether playing tabla as a boy, selling minicomputers in the 1970s, or steering India’s quantum future, Ajai Chowdhry has lived by the principle that aspiration, when pursued with grit, can transcend circumstance.

India at 100: Technological Sovereignty as Destiny

Looking ahead to 2047, the centenary of India’s independence, Ajai Chowdhry is clear about what the nation must achieve: design, engineering, and technology sovereignty.

Over-dependence on services, he warns, has left India vulnerable. While software has delivered economic growth and global reputation, true power lies in products and design—in the ability to control one’s own technological destiny.

As global supply chains fragment and geopolitical rivalries sharpen, self-reliance is no longer a slogan but a necessity. Semiconductors, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing—these are not just industries but instruments of sovereignty.

“We must use our minds,” he insists. “India must be a product nation.”

From Partition’s Shadows to Quantum Horizons

From the trauma of Partition to the triumphs of HCL, from policy corridors to global boardrooms, from education scholarships to quantum missions—Ajai Chowdhry’s life has been an unbroken chain of aspiration.

He has witnessed both missed opportunities and moments of breakthrough. He has seen India surrender its hardware lead and then claw its way back into global supply chains. He has helped shape policies, nurtured entrepreneurs, and championed frontier science. Through it all, his faith in India’s potential has remained undiminished.

The message he leaves behind is not just for entrepreneurs or policymakers but for every citizen: if we aspire—truly aspire—there is no frontier beyond our reach.

This InfoFire conversation with Mr. Chowdhry offers not just a personal narrative, but a wider lens into India’s journey with technology, self-reliance, and social equity. His insights bridge the past and future, urging us to imagine a nation that not only codes but also creates, designs, and leads