Brijendra K Syngal, the head of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) which is a state-owned monopoly for international telecom. Well, Syngal launched the internet in five Indian cities - Delhi, Bombay, Kolkata (then Calcutta), Chennai (then Madras) and Pune - on 15 August, 1995. These were the specific places where the internet was brought in India.

HIGHLIGHTS
Internet in India was first launched in Delhi, Bombay, Kolkata, Chennai and Pune
The day of Internet origin was considered as India's 'Second Independence Day'
India has around 800 million mobile broadband subscribers

Newspapers have called the day of origin of Internet as India's 'Second Independence Day'. Well, India was considered to be the first country in Asia to have a commercial internet service.

He was confused and tensioned whether or not Internet in India would be a great idea to execute when 'we were so much ill-equipped'. Unlike the stodgy counterparts within the government, Syngal’s next step towards this was audacious and later he called up the media and admitted: 'I goofed up. I goofed up massive time'.

He had informed the reporters that his market intelligence was wrong and the services were plagued by certain 'serious' technical issues. 'It was a small amount of an amateur venture,' he added. It was then when Syngal had asked the Indians to provide him around 10 weeks in order to fix things where it is going wrong.

Suddenly, after admitting and asking certain time from the people Syngal and his team had started working on the problems. They created a bank of servers, made the phone department to enhance the connectivity, pushed the modern makers to confirm quality devices, shifted from copper to fibre-based cables, and slashed tariffs by almost half and more.

As he found that his state-run firm was weak at marketing, he therefore got a private franchise to sell internet services. Currently, the customer can now carry over the unused data.

He took almost eight weeks for India to induce the new system up in a running and stable manner. He had taken ideas from British Telecom and AT&T, and even an early group of Indian internet enthusiasts which had Bollywood actor Shammi Kapoor who was made to form the service more robust, user-friendly and popular.

Syngal has become a bit of a hero by this time. In 2000, on a vacation, the owner of an upscale handicraft shop in Rajasthan had suddenly recognized him and asked: 'Are you the Mr. Syngal who is behind the arrival of internet to India?. That moment completely changed my life'.

He was the son of a civil servant father and homemaker mother, who had migrated to India in 1947 within the wake of the bloody partition, Syngal visited Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the country's prime engineering institute.

About twenty-seven years after it got the internet, India has more than 800 million mobile broadband subscribers, the world's second-fastest digitising economy. The country is also considered as the software powerhouse, with exports of services exceptional $130bn.

Since, then he was known as the 'father of India's internet' as most of its credit goes to him. After a prolonged illness, Brijendra K Syngal passed away at the age of 82 on this Saturday.

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