Repair market size is $20 billion, says Ajai Chowdhury

Ajai Chowdhry, HCL's co-founder, shared how India has the capability to repair anything and how ChatGPT has changed everything. He also recollected how HCL created a factory for repairing Nokia phones and how they created a market when there were only 100 computers in the country. His book, Just Aspire, outlines how technology will shape the nation and the world's future.

If India wants to be the repair capital of the world the opportunity size is $20 billion a year, said Ajai Chowdhry, HCL’s co-founder and Author of the book Just Aspire: Notes on Technology, Entrepreneurship and the Future.

During an interaction with author and Journalist Sushila Ravindranath at an event that was organised by the Madras Management Association (MMA), he recollected how HCL created a factory for repairing Nokia phones. “When we were distributing that product….products that come dead on arrival has to go back. We gave them an offer that we will repair those phones. They said you can’t and we picked up the challenge. We had 400 people working in that factory. We were successful – we were so successful that Nokia replicated this all over the world,” he said and stressed on the fact that India had the capability to repair anything.

Mr. Chowdhry, who launched his book in Chennai on Thursday, said that ChatGPT had changed everything. He said: “There was this thinking that by 2045 the computer will overtake the human brain – this would be called singularity....... that singularity is achieved – but with ChatGPT this could be achieved much earlier. You can see the impact it is going to have in the way we live and the way we will live in future. With all these technologies, there is a possibility of increasing our life span,” he added.

He spoke about how HCL created a market. “Interestingly, when we started, there were just 100 computers in the country and that where we saw the huge market. There are 600 million people in this country and the market is huge. At that time, there were very few other companies in the country. So, we thought if there are 100 computers we better go out and create the market,” he said.

He went to add: “When we started delivering the computers, we were writing the software for the customer. We suddenly discovered that not many people existed who could actually use a computer. So that became a cost for us. And some of the founders of HCL created NIIT and that’s how NIIT got formed. So, from a cost center we converted it into a profit center.”

Sharing his views on the book, M.M. Murugappan, Chairman, Carborundum Universal Ltd., said: “I have known Ajai for over four decades and I’m pleased to tell you that he is a Chennai boy in terms of his professional career start. The book talks about defining moments of his life and that of his company. It outlines how technology will play an important role in shaping the nation and shaping the world’s future.”