Sam Pitroda, India’s godfather of innovation

I’m still an engineer in my heart, because I see things as systems — input, output, delay, response, efficiency and productivity. I also integrate this to include social systems: how does my work affect people? Poor people, young people. I think in terms of systems, but multiple dimensions. Being logical, it’s a way of life. Engineering systems are incredibly handy when dealing with social systems.

I’m from a very poor family. My father had a fourth grade education, the family had no money, I borrowed money to travel out of India. I had eight brothers and sisters. I realised that in the beginning making money was important, so when I was young I used to say to my friends, without really understanding its meaning, that I needed to make enough money by the time I’m 40 so that I can do what I want afterwards. The tough task is to stop at that point and focus on something else.

I came to the US to get a PhD in physics. Then my professor told me it takes seven years to get a PhD. I had a girlfriend, and I was young and stupid, so I said, ‘I’m not going to spend seven years getting a degree!’ So I thought, can I do something quickly to get a job? My professor said, ‘Yes, you can get a degree in electrical engineering in nine months.’ That’s what I did. Life just takes turns and you never know what will be delivered to you.

A lot of my patents are system patents. My first one was on tone generation — how do you generate analogue tones using digital memory? This was in the 1960s when people had no idea about such things. Then I had a patent on conference calling and digital conference calls. I had a lot of little ideas! And now I have a series of patents on digital mobile wallets.

We are going through a major generational revolution. I have been saying that this is a bigger event than World War II. This is destruction of a different type. The first telecoms revolution was about connecting people to talk. Not that long ago we had two million telephones in India, today we have millions. Now how do we use that technology to bring education to people, information on agriculture, financial services? It is all about democratisation of information, that’s the next revolution.

We need to reduce cost and improve access to food, education, health and energy. We need to take care of these four things and make it so cheap so that anyone can afford health services, good energy. Surely everyone should have these things today? The problems of the poor really don’t get the talent to solve them that they deserve.

We have to learn to change our developmental model. The model currently is more cars, more homes, more, more, more. That model can’t work for ten billion people. Can we imagine ten billion cars in the world? We have to think about new models, based upon happiness. Where people are happy with personal growth, happy with their family.

I don’t care about titles. So you win a Nobel Prize, big deal. That’s not the game in life, no one’s going to remember you after a while anyway. It’s all fake — we will give you a plaque, a statue, and all that, and it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s a journey that has to end at some point in time, so enjoy the journey and love people in the process.

If I slow down I die. So I enjoy what I do. Last night I had two hours of video from 11pm to 1am. I got up at 6am, came to the office. I would rather be busy, but I enjoy life and have no stress. Never retire! Always do something, teach kids, help others, but don’t give up.

Gandhi is my hero and his is the model we need. I would really like to see a change of mind, a mind-set change. We are in a mindset from the 19th century. Everybody is arguing, everybody is blaming others rather than blaming ourselves. I think people need to search their souls. Am I a problem? Or am I a solution?