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He started his career way back with DCM Data Products in Delhi in 1981. It was here that he wrote the OS based on PLM for the CPM computers from Digital Research, which DCM was using at that time. Subsequently, he worked with TCS for a couple of projects based on PL/1 and ALGOL development platforms which today can be located only in a museum. But, as Garg says, he always had a bent of mind towards R&D work and the commercial environment in DCM or TCS was constricting to him. This prompted him to switch to Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai in early 1985. In TIFR, he was part of a UNDP aided group called National Center for Software Development & Computing Techniques (NCSDCT) under Prof Narsimhan. It was this group which later became the National Center for Software Technology (NCST).
Explains Garg, “While the quality of the people in NCSDCT was more research-oriented, the work in TIFR was more applied than fundamental. Hence, DoE took the decision to demerge the bodies and gave birth to NCST.” Working with NCST under the stewardship of Dr S Ramani, Garg truly came into the limelight with his involvement in a host of high-profile government projects. These included the development of OilComent, a messaging application for all oil companies and refineries under the OCC communication network project. He was also involved with the Rangarajan Committee, which at that time was looking at modes of increasing automation in banks. His contributions included the MICR cheque-clearing mechanism under the Banknet project in 1987, besides also introducing the X.25 standard for IBM computers being used in RBI at that time.
At the same time, Garg was also indulging in some parallel experimentation with UUCP and Unix and in 1986 he connected to IIT Bombay via dial-up for the first time. This spawned the idea to connect all premier academic institutes in the country. “The goal was to let all these institutes share ideas amongst themselves. Tragically, all of them knew what was happening at Yale and Purdue, but not in another academy in India,” says Garg.
His proposal to the government for the academic network was approved in 1988 and thereby came up ERNET, the network between eight institutes for sending and receiving e-mails. Today, ERNET is universally acknowledged to be the birth of the Internet in India. In its very first year, ERNET was such a stupendous success, that Garg reveals, they had to change from a dial-up to a leased circuit by 1990. However, Garg’s free spirit soon revolted as ERNET was increasingly becoming a very closed group and subsequently in 1992 he joined an IT venture floated by Business India to provide value-added services.
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