The Computer History Museum (CHM) is excited to begin a new effort on the contributions of Indians to the history of computing, building upon its past accomplishments on this important topic. India’s history as an independent democracy and the history of our digital world share common origins in 1947. This year of India’s formal freedom from British control is also the year of the transistor’s invention, the fundamental device through which computing, and our digital world, have so rapidly grown. 1947 also witnessed early examples of the first generation of electronic digital computers being put into regular use.
For the first three decades (1947-1977) of independence, the dominant force shaping the history of computing in India was the state. State planning, policy, politics, and organizations largely determined how and where the first computers were used and built in the new nation. Many early Indian computers were tied to national projects of economic planning, military strength, and nuclear ambitions – as they were also in the United States. State investments in education, particularly for science and technology, launched many important new institutions. Yet, in this period, over half of the graduates of these schools left India to pursue opportunities abroad.
The 1960 naming ceremony for TIFRAC, the first electronic digital computer created in India, a project of the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR). Rangaswamy Narasimhan (foreground center) demonstrates the TIFRAC to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (foreground center) and to TIFR founding director Homi Bhabha. Source: TIFR.
An Indian computing industry grew in the period from 1977 to 1990. Changes to state regulation and policy allowed private firms developing minicomputers and software to take hold and develop both domestic and export markets. The economic liberalizations of 1991 added great momentum to the Indian computing industry, particularly favoring the export of software and software services, with a set of innovative Indian firms taking advantage of the moment.
The principal founder of Infosys, N. R. Narayana Murthy (left), with co-founder Nandan Nilekani (right) in front of an early Infosys facility. Infosys was a key player in the growth of the Indian software industry. Source: Infosys
From 1998 to 2009, the Indian computing industry created accelerating growth. In software and business process services, the work to solve the world’s Y2K crisis led to tremendous expansion, and new regulations for telecommunications afforded huge private investments in mobile telephony and data connectivity. Today, almost every Indian household has access to a digital computer in the form of a smartphone, and India enjoys the world’s least expensive mobile data.
A smartphone user on the streets of Mumbai in 2025. Source: Ashish Vaishnav/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
From 2010 to the present, the story of computing in India has been one of tremendous innovation and entrepreneurship. Hyperscale digital public infrastructures have become open platforms, presenting fresh opportunities for a flourishing entrepreneurial and venture scene. And across this vibrant period of development from 1980 on, graduates of India’s prized universities have not just simply left for opportunities abroad. The story has become one of circulation, of Indians alternating between computing work at home and abroad, creating vital global networks on which centers like Silicon Valley and Bangaluru both depend. India has become an indispensable source of tech talent for the world, as evidenced by Indian-educated technologists leading as the CEOs of several of the world’s largest companies, the tech giants.
Sundar Pichai, IIT Kharagpur graduate and CEO of Google, at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi in 2026. Source: Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images.
Despite this rich history, the contributions of innovators and entrepreneurs from India across the past half-century from 1975 to the present, and their place in the story of computing, remain both little understood and dramatically underappreciated. In the next three years, CHM is going to build on our previous serious efforts to directly address both these problems in our new India’s Tech Innovators project, made possible by a generous grant from the Infosys Foundation USA.
Using its expertise in oral history, the Museum will conduct ten interviews with key Indian contributors both in India and in Silicon Valley. Through the Museum’s digital collections platform, OpenCHM, these oral histories will be made freely available globally. The Museum will use its convening capabilities to host two public education events, increasing awareness of India’s tech innovators among international publics and Silicon Valley leaders.
Bangalore at night. Source: Sumit_Kumar_99 via Getty Images
As a capstone, CHM will use these oral histories and events to inform the addition of new content in the Software Gallery in the Museum’s flagship permanent exhibit, Revolution: The First 2,000 Years of Computing. For this new content, our key message is that the creation of software is now a global phenomenon, with countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe now home to key companies and technical workforces. To illustrate this global phenomenon, we will touch on a few examples like Brazil, Singapore, Ukraine, Israel, and Ireland. The centerpiece will be India’s software and services industry, and how the success of the global delivery model provided the basis for a vibrant startup scene and the development of digital public infrastructures more recently.
By making these oral histories freely available online as transcripts and video recordings, and by having our events be in-person, live-streamed, and available for on-demand viewing online, the project will serve both the general public and technology-involved audiences in the US, India, and beyond. The new content in the Software Gallery of CHM’s permanent exhibit Revolution will engage on-site visitors to the Museum, which include a high proportion of foreign museumgoers. We extend our sincere thanks to the Infosys Foundation USA, its leadership and its staff, for making this important work possible.
