FC Kohli | Photo credit: BCCL
Bangalore: Faqir Chand Kohli or FC Kohli, often called the father of India’s software industry, passed away on Thursday at the age of 96. A veteran of the Tata Group, he was the founder and first CEO of the world’s largest software exporter. India, TCS, and was recognized as a visionary who always looked to the next frontier and put India on the global map for software services.
“FC Kohli was a visionary who created and shaped an industry that transformed every facet of India. Several generations of men and women in India owe it to him for nurturing the IT industry that created millions of high jobs. quality, put India on the world map, and most importantly, it helped to believe in the power of technology to solve societal challenges, “said Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, former President of Cognizant India, who has worked with FC Kohli at TCS and has interacted closely with him for decades.
“He was always looking to the next frontier. He started talking about computing in Indian languages in the 1990s and his perpetual moan was that we are not doing anything for electronic hardware,” former Nasscom president Ganesh Natarajan told ET NOW.
ET NOW understands that software body Nasscom held a virtual condolence meeting with members of its executive committee as news of Kohli’s death reached out. Tata Sons and TCS are expected to release statements in the next few hours.
FC Kohli was born in Peshawar, British India, on March 19, 1924. He studied in Peshawar and obtained his BA and BSc (Hons) from Government College for Men in Lahore at the University of Punjab, Lahore, where he was a university gold medalist. . He attended Queen’s University, Canada and completed his BSc (Hons) in Electrical Engineering in 1948. He then worked for a year at the Canadian General Electric Company and subsequently completed his Master of Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1950.
He returned to India in early August 1951 and joined the Tata Electric Companies. In September 1969, he became CEO of Tata Consultancy Services. In 1974, he was appointed Deputy Director and in 1994 Vice President of TCS. TCS was established in 1968 with its headquarters in Mumbai and FC Kohli was appointed as the first CEO. He was president of NASSCOM from 1995 to 1996.
