Monday, October 5, 2020

Y2K Exodus gave birth to Dnyandeep

 My association  with computers is from 1970 when programming was at infant stage.
Since my stay in IIT, Kanpur during 1973-76 , I was attracted to computers and was following the progress of the world in this new technology.


Arrival of BBC computers at school level in 1983 gave us a chance to educate school children in computing as our Walchand College became nodal centre for this work.

My brother did M. Tech. in IIT Mumbai and developed programs in Fortran for grid slab. We in our college also were doing some programs in C, Basic and Fortran for student projects. In our Applied Mechanic Department, almost all post graduate work was done in computer programming as Dr. Shiyekar was leader in using this technology.

Our college had started Basic programming course for outside professionals and teacher through initiative by Prof. N. R. Phadnis, Head of Electronics division. I took lectures and guided students projects in programming.

My wife did Basic course and conducted one month training course for highschool students of Savarkar Pradnya Prashala in 1985.

I got opportunity to learn Unix and Cobol at PSI Systems in Bangalore in one month course, as college wanted to purchase Omni Computer.
   
Later my wife started Suyash Computers class in Vishrambag in partnership with Suhas Khambe and Vijaya Kulkarni.

In 1987, we had gone to Bangkok trip with Sugar factory technicians. I brought Commodore computer from there and it became our first home computer with colored TV as screen, where my son and daughter developed many games.

I asked my daughter Sumedha to take computer branch for engineering and she graduated in 1994 from Walchand College. 

 In 1995, she was married to Suhas Gogate from Gogate family in Sangli. He had done ME in computers and was working in CDAC, Pune. Later they joined TATA-IBM in Bangalore.

Since 1995, there was  growing concern about the fate of Industries and Businesses and Transport companies about the likely disruption of computer programs in the year 2000 as all these programs were using two digits for year in date format which will become zero on
1st Jan. 2000 and would disrupt timetables and banks.

It was necessary to change these programs by replacing two digit year to four digit year.
 The work was huge, required computer knowledge and very few people were ther in advanced countries to tackle this issue.Many new startups and companies were established in Europe and America sensing the opportunities.

Then the demand of educated smart young graduates suddenly sky rocketed and most of the bright students and computer professionals  went to foreign countries with lucrative job offers.  

My son-in-law also went to USA with family and joined IBM. We were happy and sad at the same time. Such an exodus of cream of society was a great loss to India. 


Myself and my wife thought that we also should start a company in India and establish  a link to  Indians  in foreign countries for easy transfer of knowledge . As our Bunglow name was Dnyandeep which was appropriate for the objective we provided three names with Dnyandeep as first word and got approval to Dnyandeep Infotech Pvt. Ltd.

By taking my nephew Manish and his classmate Amogh Kulkarni and my friend Prof. Ramesh Charate along with my wife we registered the company by  taking a risk of investing Rs.35000/- and copleting all formalities through Panpalia & Co. in Sangli. He registered the company first in Mumbai office name of his friend to hasten the process and then transferred the address to our house in Sangli.


Inauguration of Dnyandeep Infotech by Prof. D. P. Sakhdev in his bunglow taken on rent

Finally on 27th November our Dnyandeep Infotech Pvt. Ltd. was born. Our idea at that time was to link our people who have gone to foreign countries and bring the knowledge from their through softhelpindia.com website and train people in India to do the work for India requirements.

My nephew could go to USA for MS and he also remained in IT field. My son also has got job in Silicon valley and myself after my wife's sad demise, could get Green Card.

Thus our  family got shifted to bay area in California also called as Silicon Valley. After coming here, I immediately launched mysiliconvalley.net website to link it to our mysangli.com website.


After 20 years, I feel that we have achieved that goal in establishing such a network. I am seeing morning light in the sky indicating the rise of sun with only saddened heart feeling absence of my wife who could not see this achievement.

No comments:

Post a Comment