How N. Vittal and a satellite dish helped break the barriers that kept Indian software from the world
MS Sparsha
There was a time when sending software from India to an overseas client was almost as difficult as writing it.
In the mid-1980s, India’s software industry was still an embryonic idea. Computers were expensive, international telecommunications were tightly controlled by the state, and India had virtually no high-speed digital connectivity with the rest of the world. For an Indian engineer working for a foreign client, the internet was not an option because there was no internet as we know it today.
Software could literally have to travel physically.
Code written by engineers in Bangalore could be recorded on magnetic tapes, packed carefully and transported by air to clients thousands of kilometres away. Days or even weeks could pass before the client tested the program and sent back the results. Any correction meant another cycle of transferring, testing and waiting.
Then came an experiment that would quietly change India’s technological destiny.
In 1985, Texas Instruments (TI), the American semiconductor and technology giant, established an operation in Bangalore. The company wanted something revolutionary for the time: a direct international data link between its facility at Sona Towers on Miller’s Road and its headquarters in Dallas, Texas.
The proposed connection was just 64 kilobits per second.
By today’s standards, that sounds almost comically slow. A modern smartphone can move data thousands or millions of times faster. But in 1985, a dedicated international digital connection of that kind was cutting-edge technology.
There was, however, one enormous problem.
India had no established regulatory framework that allowed a private foreign company to simply establish and operate its own international telecommunications link. International communications were firmly under government control. A satellite earth station involved telecommunications, customs, security and strategic considerations. A large antenna pointing towards the sky was enough to trigger official scrutiny.
The equipment therefore had to navigate India’s formidable bureaucratic and customs machinery before it could even be installed.
And when the equipment finally reached Bangalore, another problem emerged—one that seems almost unbelievable today.
The city did not have the infrastructure to transport such specialised equipment in the manner we would expect from a major technology project. The satellite dish, according to accounts of the pioneering installation, was transported through Bangalore on a bullock cart.
It is one of those images that captures an entire era in a single frame: a sophisticated satellite communications system, destined to connect Indian engineers with the United States, being slowly hauled through Bangalore by animals that belonged to an entirely different century.
But the symbolism was profound.
Once the satellite earth station was installed, Indian engineers could communicate directly with computers in the United States. Code written in Bangalore could be transmitted electronically to Dallas, processed there and the results sent back.
For the first time, geographical distance ceased to be the fundamental barrier.
The TI experiment demonstrated something much bigger than the success of a single communications project. It proved that highly skilled Indian engineers did not necessarily have to relocate to America or Europe to participate in global technology projects.
The work could be done in Bangalore. The client could be in Dallas.
That was the beginning of a new possibility for Indian software.
But there was a catch.
The technology was still prohibitively expensive.
A private international satellite link required substantial investment in equipment, bandwidth and licensing. A multinational corporation such as Texas Instruments could absorb those costs. A small Indian software company could not.
And this presented India with a dangerous contradiction.
The country possessed talented engineers and a growing pool of technical manpower. The world was beginning to discover the capabilities of Indian programmers. But the very infrastructure required to sell their skills internationally remained beyond the reach of most Indian entrepreneurs.
India had the talent.
It lacked the highway.
This is where N. Vittal, one of the most important and least celebrated architects of India’s technology revolution, entered the story.
As Secretary of the Department of Electronics, Vittal understood that India’s problem was not merely a shortage of computers or programmers. The deeper problem was the absence of an ecosystem that allowed Indian companies to connect with the global market.
His solution was ingenious in its simplicity.
Why should every software company build its own expensive international communications facility?
Why not create shared infrastructure that hundreds of companies could use?
That thinking became central to the creation of the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI).
The policy architecture behind STPI helped remove several of the obstacles that had made software exports so difficult. Shared satellite communications facilities allowed companies to access international connectivity without having to build their own expensive infrastructure. Simplified procedures and customs concessions made it easier for technology companies to import the equipment they needed. The model also gave software exporters a more supportive regulatory environment at a time when India’s bureaucracy was notorious for creating hurdles for private enterprise.
Most importantly, the system recognised that software was different from traditional manufacturing.
A software company did not need a factory beside a port, a railway line or a coal mine.
It needed people, computers and connectivity.
That insight proved transformative.
The early Indian software companies could suddenly begin thinking beyond the domestic market. Engineers in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and other technology centres could work for customers in North America, Europe and elsewhere without physically moving abroad.
The impact was enormous.
India’s software exports, which were modest in the early 1990s, began accelerating. The industry that was once regarded by many as a niche activity gradually became one of the country’s most important export engines.
Companies such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro became global technology brands. A vast ecosystem of software firms, engineering services companies, business-process operations and technology startups emerged around them.
Millions of jobs were created directly and indirectly.
Indian cities acquired global reputations as technology centres.
And perhaps most importantly, the world began to view Indian technological talent differently.
The story of India’s IT revolution is often told through the names of celebrated entrepreneurs and the companies they built. That is understandable. The founders who took Indian software companies to the world deserve enormous credit.
But businesses cannot flourish in a vacuum.
Behind India’s technology entrepreneurs stood policymakers, administrators, engineers and institutions that removed barriers that entrepreneurs themselves could not have removed.
- Vittal was one of them.
His contribution was not about writing software or founding a billion-dollar company. It was about recognising a structural problem and redesigning the system around it.
The contrast between the two moments could not be more striking.
In 1985, a satellite dish required a bureaucratic battle and was reportedly transported through Bangalore on a bullock cart.
A few years later, the policy environment was being reshaped so that hundreds of Indian companies could access international communications infrastructure.
The bullock cart was not merely carrying a dish.
In retrospect, it was carrying the first physical symbol of India’s digital future.
There is an important lesson in Vittal’s story. Technology revolutions are not created by technology alone. They require imagination in government, courage in administration and policies that allow talent to overcome structural limitations.
India already had engineers capable of competing with the world.
What it needed was a way to connect those engineers to the world.
Texas Instruments demonstrated that the connection was technically possible.
- Vittal helped make it economically and institutionally scalable.
That distinction changed everything.
From a tiny satellite link measured in 64 kilobits per second emerged an industry that would eventually handle billions of dollars in exports and place Indian technology professionals at the centre of the global digital economy.
Today, when a software engineer in Bangalore collaborates instantly with a client in New York, London or Dallas, nobody thinks about satellite dishes, customs battles or bullock carts.
Nor should they.
But history should remember the people who made that effortless connectivity possible.
The IT revolution did not begin with a smartphone, a startup or even the internet. In one remarkable chapter, it began with a satellite dish, a determined administrator and a bullock cart making its way through the streets of Bangalore.
And among the unsung heroes of that transformation, N. Vittal deserves a place of honour.
