New Delhi: ‘The Maverick Effect’ by NASSCOM’s founding member Harish Mehta follows the untold story of how a ‘band of dreamers’ made India the global IT leader. The book delves into how NASSCOM, the umbrella body of India’s software industry, played a pivotal role in enhancing the Indian IT sector’s brand image.
Published by HarperCollins, ‘The Maverick Effect’ will be released on 5 April on Softcover, ThePrint’s online venue to launch select nonfiction books.
Valued at a staggering $200 billion today, the Indian IT industry employs more than four million people. The industry is the largest forex earner and has helped millions of Indians beat poverty and rise to the middle-income group.
The book details how in the mid-1970s, Mehta, then a young, twenty-something man living an “American dream”, threw away a lucrative job as a database manager and returned to India. This was a time when India had no IT industry — computers were a novelty and the nation was trapped in socio-economic backwardness.
Mehta realised that India’s nascent and fragmented IT sector was in need of a united voice that could speak to the government, change laws and harness the country’s potential. In an unlikely alliance of headstrong and competing young professionals, he united other IT entrepreneurs to envision an association that would revolutionise the Indian IT industry.
“The impact that NASSCOM and the Indian IT industry have had on India is unparalleled,” Mehta said.
“I have often been asked about the inside story of how NASSCOM was started. I realised that I could not point anyone to a definitive source. And thus, I took upon myself to write a book,” he added.
Sachin Sharma, executive editor of HarperCollins India, said, “The world today understands and respects the might of India’s IT industry but there’s an incredible backstory behind how this global leadership was achieved. ‘The Maverick Effect’ presents a brilliant inside account of how some competitors got together, created an industry body called NASSCOM and transformed a nation. Here is a book that will inspire generations to come.”
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