AUTHOR: HARISH MEHTA
PUBLISHER: HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS INDIA
In the mid-1970s, a young, twenty-something man living an American dream threw away a lucrative job as a database manager and came back to India.
At that time, India had no IT industry to speak of; computers were a novelty, and the nation was trapped in socio-economic backwardness and a labyrinthine License Raj.
As young Harish Mehta struggled to find his stride, he realised that India’s nascent and fragmented IT industry acutely needed a unified 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 a world-beating association that would revolutionise Indian IT: NASSCOM.
The Maverick Effect is the extraordinary story of this band of dreamers who joined hands to transform a nation while also changing the lens through which the world looked at India. Valued at a staggering $200 billion today, the Indian IT industry directly employs more than four million people. It is the largest forex earner and has helped millions of Indians beat poverty and rise to the middle-income group.
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.
Harish Mehta, in this exceptionally written book, provides his unique insights on the tireless efforts it took to set up NASSCOM, which played a pivotal role in enhancing the IT sector’s global brand image and in helping create the great Indian middle class. He quotes ‘nothing is possible without men, but nothing lasts without institutions’ and uses it as an allegory to talk about NASSCOM.
Harish Mehta is the founder and executive chairperson of Onward Technologies Ltd. He is the founding member and the first elected chairman of NASSCOM, a not-for-profit representing India’s burgeoning IT industry and considered among the world’s most exemplary associations.
As a prominent angel investor, he also spends time mentoring young entrepreneurs and startups.
