Sam Pitroda is an internationally respected development thinker, policy maker, telecom inventor and entrepreneur, who has spent over four decades in Information and Communications Technology and related human and national development initiatives.
Credited with having laid the foundation of India’s technology and telecommunications revolution in the 1980s, Mr. Pitroda has been a leading campaigner in helping bridge the global digital divide.
During his tenure as Adviser to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s, Mr. Pitroda headed six technology missions related to telecommunications, water, literacy, immunisation, dairy and oil seeds. He was also the founder and first chairman of India’s Telecom Commission. In these roles, he helped revolutionise India’s development policies and philosophies with a focus on access to technology as the key to social change.
Mr. Pitroda was Chairman of India’s National Knowledge Commission (2005-2009), an advisory body to the Prime Minister of India, set up to provide a blueprint for reform of knowledge related institutions and infrastructure in the country. The Commission has offered a series of recommendations on various aspects of the knowledge paradigm to help India meet the challenges of the 21st century.
He was Adviser to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations and held important positions of Chairman of the Expert Committee on the use of ICT in Railways and Chairman of the Smart Grid Task Force set up under the aegis of the Ministry of Power, Government of India. He is founding Commissioner of the United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development.
He holds close to 100 worldwide patents and has published and lectured widely in the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia.