There are instances when an organization transcends its charter and becomes a social force assuming a broader and deeper place in society by virtue of what it does and stands for. The story of NIIT that began in 1981 belongs to this category. In the field of education, NIIT is a corporate movement, touching large swathes of people and communities across the globe, from all walks of life, and transforming millions of people by lifting their skills to match the opportunities of the times. Its been forty years since the idea of IT literacy and skilling became the vision and mission of NIIT. The flame of passion and commitment that forged its inception, continues to burn bright and luminous today, spreading its effulgence across multiple domains, practices, and social segments. We are pioneers on many fronts.
When India was waking up to the rumblings of the software revolution in the early eighties, NIIT had already established its first learning center in Mumbai, staffed with experts; when COBOL was still a niche language for only an elite bunch of programmers, NIIT demystified its usage and evangelized it among thousands of students and professionals who later went on to become mainframe and legacy enterprise architects across the globe; When the idea of databases was still in its relative infancy, NIIT, with prescience, launched courses on FoxPro and Dbase to showcase its power and efficiency of databases in managing growing amounts of data; when there was doubt on how India could encourage and evangelize the liberal use of computers, considering the prohibitive cost and scarcity at that time, NIIT introduced the revolutionary concept of Computer Drome to allow more time for young minds to play and experiment with computers and programming; when Microsoft and its products were beginning to gain traction around the world, NIIT forged a partnership with Microsoft to bring in its latest software from the ovens of the Microsoft factory; when there was need to developed skilled IT professionals who could work on par with formal engineers, the three year GNIIT program was born; when an liberalized Indian economy opened up in 1991 and global expansion was in the air, NIIT opened its first overseas office to serve a global audience and in the process embraced oppurtinities that greatly expanded the portfolio and reach of the company; when the rate of change in technology accelerated at a rapid pace in the new millennium making older technologies obsolesecent as quickly as new ones arrived, NIIT was agile enough to keep pace with the change by adding new courses and innovative learning interventions; and later, when the traditional methods of developing software yielded to agile approaches, which in turn required a new breed of developers, NIIT responded with Stackroute, a disruptive and transforming learning experience that suited the programming and consulting needs of modern product development; when the pandemic struck in early 2020, we were nimble enough to restructure the way we worked in no time, virtually transfromng all our educational offerings to the remote model within a few months without diluting quality. The list of NIIT’s innovations over the last four decades is testimony to our adaptability, resolute vision, and fierce resilience. We have always striven to keep pace with the changes outside, and that is one of the most important reasons for our consistent growth and relevance.
Though we run training like a business, we are aware that each class we run, each line of courseware content we write, and each education service we manage – touches and transforms the life of an eager learner somewhere in the world. Education is unlike any other product sold in the market; it is often not tangible in the sense of holding something in our hand, but, it profoundly affects the individual, the recipient, at a deeper level. It alters the quality of life for the individual. And we take that responsibility very seriously.
On this our fortieth foundation day, we renew our commitment once again to the vision statement that our founders so thoughtfully carved out for us. It is a profound vision statement, unique in the corporate world, in that, it speaks of the moral and ethical imperatives that each NIITian shall adopt, along with how we do our daily business. Whenever I read the NIIT vision statement, I am always reminded of the preamble to the Indian constitution, for its style, majesty, and power. Values come first, then people, followed by quality, and then finally the business vision, in that order respectively. The stress in our vision document is on emotional ownership, a striking phrase in our official charter. It means: while we will make our business decisions with meticulous rationality, we will own them emotionally. What a beautiful idea that balances the yin and yang of doing business.
As proud and committed NIITians, we look forward to touching many more lives through our work and in the process strive to live up to our full potential in everything we do.
Wishing all of you a happy foundations day.