MEET SATYAM ROYCHOWDHURY

The extraordinary mind behind reshaping education in Bengal and beyond

SATYAM ROY CHOWDHURY, the Founder & Managing Director of Techno India Group is an ace educationist, a global persona, an author, a philanthropist and a visionary in persistent pursuit of excellence, revolutionising the educational landscape of Bengal, and India at large for over four decades

What inspired you to establish Techno India Group at a time when private engineering colleges were scarce in West Bengal?

Back in the early 1980s, because of a dearth of private engineering colleges in West Bengal, meritorious students were compelled to relocate to other states for higher studies. This was causing a massive brain drain of the state. This had to stop, anyhow. Bengal was totally oblivious to computer literacy at that time. The country was just getting used to big machines, and there was widespread apprehension about the uncertain future of the young workforce. Adamant to break the stereotype of school pass-outs joining typing classes, my elder brother Goutam Roychowdhury and I realised the immense potential of computer education, as we could foresee that the professional life of the new generation would substantially be dependent on the application of computer in day-to-day life. We felt the strong urge to save our state from losing its academic cream. We toiled very hard, and we spent a whopping one lakh rupees to buy a computer.

In 1984, we could finally open the first computer training centre in a small room 500 metres away from our home in Chinsurah, Hooghly, and that was the birth of the Institute of Computer Engineers, India (ICE[I]), the bedrock of Techno India Group.

How do you balance the integration of technology and social entrepreneurship in your educational initiatives?