Against All Odds: The IT Story of India is written by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan together with N Dayasindhu and Krishnan Narayanan who have also been associated with Infosys in the past. Dayasindhu and Narayanan also run Itihaasa which is a non-profit funded by Gopalakrishnan and others to record oral histories of the people associated with the IT industry. The list of people constitutes mostly the founders, senior executives and bureaucrats who had an insider’s view of the industry. The book largely draws upon this archive of oral history that has been created.
The anecdotes in the book bring the early days of the IT industry alive. Stories of Narayana Murthy personally testing software in the middle of the night or three Infosys founders living in a one-room apartment in Paris to execute a project are stuff of legend and inspiration. The access and trust that the authors have with the participants of this project allow capturing of these stories. It would be wonderful if the project can capture stories of the common Indian too, whose life has been transformed by this industry—a farmer whose daughter became an IT professional, a caterer to an IT company or an engineer who became an Infosys stock millionaire.