TCS founder Faqir Chand Kohli dies at 96 – Moneycontrol

Faqir Chand Kohli, the founder and first CEO of Tata Consultancy Services, passed away on November 26. Kohli, often called the father of the Indian IT industry, was 96 years old.

Widely recognised as the brilliant technocrat parachuted in from the Tata Electric Companies, Kohli was actively involved in the decision to bring IBM to India as part of Tata-IBM in 1991. This was part of the joint-venture for hardware manufacturing and support in India initiative.

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Referred to as ‘Father of the Software Industry’, FC Kohli pioneered India’s ‘Technology Revolution’ and helped the country build the $100 billion IT industry as first CEO of TCS.

Though after hanging his boots, Kohli worked on an adult literacy programme to teach people who have never been educated and it was reported that it did help build literacy.

“That’s perhaps the biggest contribution to my own country and government in helping increase literacy. It allows people to read starting small and basically for those who have never ever read and no options and designed especially for them,” Kohli had said to MoneyControl on October 2, 2020.

Kohli joined Tata Electric Companies in 1951 and helped set up the load despatching system to manage the system operations. Following this, he became the director of the company in 1970 and was appointed as the first CEO of TCS later. He retired in 1999 at the age of 75.