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On April 8th 2001, there was a TiE All-India Charter Members’ meet at the Oberoi,
Delhi.This was the last event Dewang attended in India. I was not expecting him to be at
the dinner because I knew he was leaving for Australia that night. Yet, he came albeit for
a very short time. Anu, my wife and several other TiE spouses caught hold of him asking
him about his wedding plans and volunteering to search a bride for him. It was not to be.
Four days later, I got up from the pooja of my father’s fifth death anniversary, switched
my phone from silent mode and saw numerous SMSes that Dewang was no more with
us. April 12th is a date etched in my memory as I lost two very dear friends on the same
date, five years apart.
That Dewang attended the TiE dinner, was not really a shock. It was not even a surprise.
He would always attempt to be at all public functions even if it was for a very short time.
His criss-crossing of the country was legendary. He was a speaker for us at Directions,
being held on successive dates in four cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai.
All the other speakers would go to the city, have local meetings aside from their sessions
and would then move to the next city. Not so with Dewang! After the Delhi event, he
flew with us for the Mumbai Directions; flew back to Delhi after finishing his session so
that he could attend a policy meet; came next morning to Bangalore; delivered his session;
went to Hyderabad because there was an educational institute being inaugurated; and
then came to Chennai next morning. A person who worked 120 hours a week, out of
which at least 30 hours were spent in planes and airports, his presence in the IT industry
was indomitable. I wish he had taken things easy as it was this hectic workload, travelling
and involvement that got to his heart. But then, perhaps the Indian IT industry would not
have been where it has reached!
I first got to know him when he was working for a company doing things in the field of
animation which came to light once he won an international recognition.
Dataquest
wrote
about this singular achievement of ‘The UK-returned Accountant turned into award-
winning documentary film-maker-cum-graphic-designer’. Impressed by his achievements
and knowledge, we asked him to write for the magazine as well. His occasional column
soon had a following.The next and the final stop was NASSCOM which he joined when
it was a fledgling organization. Some would say it was a tottering organization. When he
joined, NASSCOM had few members and negative funds. What he did from there is
historic.
I interacted with him very closely during the World Bank Funded Study on IT Software
and Services opportunity for India in which CyberMedia’s market research group was
a key consultant. The study conducted in 1991 involved the government, private sector
and the associations. Dewang was on the Steering Committee and over a period of eight
months, we all worked closely together to evolve a vision and strategy for India’s Software
Industry. Dewang very often used to recall that one snowy morning in Boston, when
Jack Epstein, the Principal Consultant combined tons of data into a vision of achieving
$1 billion of exports by 1996. We all got very fascinated by the vision. The excitement of
creating a billion-dollar industry was infectious. We were all bubbling with ideas as we
devised an action plan.
There are numerous studies that are conducted; hundreds of action plans devised; but very
few of them actually get converted into reality. But Dewang went beyond the action plan.
He took up the growth of the software export industry as a personal mission. He became
the evangelist and the ambassador for India’s software industry. From a $120 million
industry in 1991, he took it to $6 billion in a decade. Rare are the instances in the history
when such game-changing economic achievements have been made in such a short time.
He was
Dataquest’s
Person of the Year in 1997 and received the Lifetime Achievement
award posthumously in 2001. There was not a single eye without tears on that day when
the citation was read and everyone present in the room relived the moments that they had
shared with him.
Dewang, your memory will live forever in my mind!
Pradeep Gupta
CMD, Cybermedia
