Sam Pitroda

Some Lesser Known Facts About Sam Pitroda

• His family is deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy.

• When he was a child, he along with his brother was sent to Gujarat to learn Gandhian Philosophy.

• When he was 22 years old, he moved to the United States for higher education and worked for GTE (General Telephone & Electronics Corporation) in Chicago in 1966.

  

• Pitroda joined Wescom Switching in 1974, which was one of the first digital switching companies. Over the period of the next four years, he developed the 580 DSS switches.

• When Rockwell International acquired Wescom, Pitroda became the Vice President of it.

• In 1984, he was called back to India by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, to work for the Center for Development of Telematics C-DOT, an autonomous telecom R&D organization. To work for the organization, he renounced his American citizenship.

  

• Almost a decade, Pitroda spent with the former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi and has also served as a technical advisor to him on various technology missions related to literacy, water, oilseed, immunization, telecom, dairy, etc.

  

• Pitroda is also a founding chairman of India’s Telecom Commission which he founded in 1987.

• In 1990, he suffered a heart attack and underwent successful surgery.

• In the 1990s, he came back to the United States to continue his business interests and in 1995, he became the first chairman of WorldTel, a part of an International Telecommunications Union initiative.

• In 2004, when Indian National Congress came to power, the then Prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, invited him to head the National Knowledge Commission of India.

  

• In 2009, Pitroda was again invited by the Indian Government to head an expert committee on ICT in Railways.

• He was appointed the Chairman of the National Innovation Council in August 2010.

• In 2013, the then President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, appointed him as the chancellor of the Central University of Rajasthan.

• Pitroda has also been the Chairman of some NGOs such as The Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI), India FoodBanking Network, People for Global Transformation, Action For India, and many others.

• Pitroda has authored some books; IEEE Transactions on Communications, Exploding Freedom: Roots in Technology, Foundation for the Future: Human Resource Development, Development of Gujarat: People’s Perceptions, Vision, Values, & Velocity, March of Mobile Money: The Future of Lifestyle Management, and Dreaming Big: My Journey to Connect India, Penguin India, 2015.

• An author named, Mayank Chhaya has written his biography, Sam Pitroda: A Biography. The book was on the list of the best seller books in India.

  

• Pitroda is also an artist, a painter. His work has been shown in an expedition in Paris, France.

  

• Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, he hit the headlines for his advocacy of the inheritance tax in India. While speaking to media persons, Sam Pitroda termed the inheritance tax, as practiced in the United States, as an ‘interesting idea’ and said that there should be a greater discussion on this in India. Later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi countered Pitroda’s statement and said that Congress was planning to redistribute the nation’s wealth to minorities, if voted in power.