Info Rush

This series is all about demystifying AI - how it works, why it matters and what it means for all of us.

Now presenting Series 1 | India Inc Loading: Byte by Byte as a movie covering all episodes without any interruptions!

By the 1990s, India’s IT industry had matured but it was about to hit the global stage in a big way as the digital countdown to chaos began.

By the early 1980s, India had found its edge - lower costs and a workforce fluent in English, and it seemed India had finally secured a lane on the global technology highway. But that didn’t mean the road was smooth.

When we talk about India’s software boom today, we imagine start-ups, code, campuses and global clients. But rewind to the 1950s and 60s and here’s the twist: There was no Indian software industry.

India was locked in a tense standoff with a multinational giant, and a country trying to assert control over its own IT destiny. 

India’s first attempt at self-reliance in technology had hit a wall. IBM wouldn’t play ball, early regulations backfired and the government was learning the hard way that ambition alone wasn’t enough.

When we talk about India’s IT success story, we usually jump straight to Bangalore, startups, outsourcing and billion-dollar tech giants. But India’s IT revolution didn’t begin with software. It began with fear, borders and a very deliberate decision to stop relying and start building.

The clock was ticking towards midnight, December thirty first, 1999. While the world braced for a digital apocalypse, a mammoth industry was in making on the far side of the world which was then viewed as a struggling agrarian nation. The seeds of that revolution were planted decades earlier, in a very different India. 

Join us as we figure out the world of chaos of technology and business into tales that grip you.

Brilliant ideas from past, high stakes decisions, cutting-edge breakthroughs, simplifying complex technologies and the shadowy side of cybercrime - all unpacked into tales that reveal how they rewire our world.