Ajai Chowdhry on HCL’s founding story
A first-person founder account of HCL’s early bootstrap: conviction in microprocessors, licence constraints, selling before the machine existed, and building an Indian computer company without venture capital.
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Logged at IST: 2026-08-12 10:13 IST
What it is: Ajai Chowdhry, HCL cofounder, recounting how the original six founders left their jobs in 1976 to start Microcomp, which became Hindustan Computers Limited through a licence partnership with UP Electronics Corporation.
Gist: The useful part is the pre-venture-capital, pre-mainstream-computing texture: six founders pooled ₹1.87 lakh, started from a barsati in Golf Links, and tried to build an Indian computer around the microprocessor before most customers knew what that meant. The licence regime forced the UP Electronics partnership, and the go-to-market was unusually bold: sell a computer still being designed, with only a brochure and mock-up.
The early orders from IIT Kharagpur and IIT Madras gave credibility, but the Premier Mills win against DCM DP is the sharper operating lesson: small teams can sometimes beat larger incumbents when they combine technical conviction, customer education, and a willingness to knock on doors before the market is ready.
Newsletter angle: A compact India-tech-history item about constraints shaping company formation: licensing, no VC, scarce customer awareness, and still enough founder-sales energy to create a durable computing company.