An Actor Chaired a Club that Brought the Internet to India
Forgotten tales from the early days of the Internet in India
There was a time when sharing files and contacting people internationally was the epitome of inconvenience. With the advent of the Internet, that task went from being a headache to a simple click. It was amusing and spread quickly. As it came to India, it brought along a million stories.
One such gem of a narrative includes the Junglee actor Shammi Kapoor as the protagonist. Surprising right? Well, follow through and you’ll know that Shammi Kapoor was not just a phenomenal actor but also chaired a club of techies that spread the Internet in India.
The Bombay Computer Club
We’ll get to Shammi ji, but for now, let me introduce Vijay Mukhi. A lover of computers who can be visualised as a typical I.T. person of today. Tech and parties in his plush South Bombay apartment were all his life was wrapped around. And oh, were the parties a thing. You could have picked a random tech enthusiast in Bombay and rather than a discussion in the middle of their workday, you’d hear, “Vijay’s place, this Friday, you’re coming right? We’ll discuss it there.” Hence, the love of Tech and drinks united people into what they called the Bombay Computer Club.
One such party at Mukhi’s Nepean Sea Road apartment is our interest for now so I’ll leave the rest of the parties and their discussions for you to look up. It was a Friday in July 1995 and B.K. Syngal, Chairman and Managing Director of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL); Amitabh Kumar, director of technology at VSNL and several others were in attendance.
Kanakasabapathy Pandyan was fiddling with two wires under a table with a restless crowd of 40 waiting for him to make sense. The drinks hadn’t been served yet and comments like “Have you become a linesman?” pierced through Pandyan who was trying to show the attendees the Internet.
After struggling with a rusted screw, he finally connected the call. The modem croaked a few times making the comments worse but then, popped up a screen; the homepage of the Apple eWorld - The Internet as it was called back then.
People were confused instead of amazed. Not many knew what the internet was and the knowledge of Apple’s eWorld was scarce, yes, even among these tech enthusiasts. That’s how early in the days of the introduction of the internet, we are talking about.
The home page had a search box, an email, bits of news, and TalkCity - the community chat room. To make people believe the potential of what they were seeing, Pandyan asked them to come forward, type a question and press enter. The answer was in the form of a web page and now, people were amazed.
Pandyan had just logged onto something outside India, and that too with a local number! VSNL guided all international communications in India back then and it irked Kumar (Director of Technology at VSNL) and Syngal (Chairman and Managing Director of VSNL) that they were being bypassed.
Kumar, though amused, wasn't going to sit back and watch, the root cause of this problem had to be dug up. After investigating for a while, Kumar found out that the number Padyan used to access the eWorld was indeed a VSNL one; a sigh of relief. The number was connecting them to the British Telecom Network and to Kumar’s surprise, it was not only Pandyan who was using that number, but also a handful of other Indians.
Before we move on, let me first introduce another very important body.
The Internet Users Club of India
Miheer Mafatlal was heavily invested in computers, you could say a little obsessed too. He was chatting with a friend who mentioned that Shammi Kapoor loved computers and more so Apple’s Macintosh or Mac. A new trivia for all you fans. Miheer tried to set up a meeting with Kapoor banking on their common love for computers. Though a little sceptical in the beginning, Kapoor was happy to meet up. The two seemed to hit it off instantly and were joined by Mukhi and Pandyan soon after; The common ground being one of Mukhi’s parties of course.
Now that our four founding members have met, let me tell you how they came across the internet in the first place. Miheer’s company, MicroGiga used to sell Apple computers as desktop publishing solutions in India. When Apple launched the eWorld service, they identified a few people across the globe to hand out beta access accounts. No credit card or international calling, just a username to log in. Kapoor landed one and so did Miheer. Kapoor and Miheer simply signed up and exploration began. They spent an insane amount of time surfing the Internet and used the community conference group to chat about festivals, dresses, gods, and foods of India.
Mukhi, an avid Windows user, loaned a Mac from Miheer and joined the band. With this eWorld login, the group decided to spread the word and began showing the Internet to people in the informal gatherings of the Bombay Computer Club. They presented demos everywhere. The moment they found a telephone line and people who cared to listen, the band would arrive to show people the power of the Internet. It was thrilling for them to tell people how the Internet could connect the world in a matter of a few clicks.
The band started to call themselves The Internet Users Club of India (IUCI). Kapoor became the face of the IUCI and eventually the Chairman. He knew how to put his point across and people listened to him. Moreover, he stayed up countless nights to download files that suited his other passions and told him about what was happening around the world. He used this knowledge to suggest solutions to the spread of the Internet in India. A detail lover for sure, he even made graphs on the download speeds and discussed them with Syngal, the CMD of VSNL.
Another proof of his being amazed and intrigued by technology is that he learned to code and design. He built his own website - The Kapoor Family website which was probably one of the first websites to be ever coded by someone who was not professionally trained to develop software. On this site, he wrote in short about the family and some things he believed in or discovered.
The IUCI under Shammi Kapoor also pioneered the concept of troll police and took up the job of keeping the Internet safe and pleasant for all. TalkCity - the chat room I mentioned before started flooding with rude and offensive chats and pages. This chunk of people overlooked the fact that it was people sitting behind the computers reading the chats and went overboard with inappropriate content.
To counter this, the IUCI made a “Page of Shame”, where offenders were listed publicly. They meant serious business, a letter was released mentioning that email addresses and real-world names of people on the page would be found and listed. If things get out of hand, even the street addresses would be tracked down.
In case these were children just having fun, their parents ought to discipline them and if employees lose their job bringing shame to their company domain, the blood’s on their own hands.
The Launch of the Internet to the Public
Well, that’s all that is necessary to give you an idea of these hidden gems of the IUCI and BCC who built the groundwork for the internet to come to India. The next day after the party at Mukhi’s apartment, Saturday, 29 July 1995, the evangelists, as they had now become, were summoned to the VSNL’s office in Fort, Mumbai. They couldn’t be happier, they wanted to spread the Internet and VSNL was just the office for them. In a way, they went from being a club obsessing over the Internet to the frontrunners bringing the Internet to Indians. And that’s how with IUCI and BCC in the backend, VSNL launched the internet publicly on the 15th of August 1995.
It’s hard to imagine at the same time amusing how Bollywood superstars like Shammi Kapoor and tech enthusiasts like Vijay Mukhi and Miheer Mafatlal organised themselves into clubs and took the onus of promoting the growth of the Internet in India. Not only that, they were careful of guarding India as a people on the global network. These are people who were crucial in laying the foundation stone yet are forgotten. These are the small steps that put the big picture in place and one way I see to honour them is an OTT series, if anyone from the industry is reading!