The fascinating history of the Internet in India | #166
Announcing a Campus Quiz Ambassador(CQA) 🤩
Pshhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchchchchchchchcch*ding*ding*ding*
No, a cat didn’t walk across our keyboard.
Folks from a certain vintage will distinctly remember the sound of a dial-up modem. Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, a few Indian households got access to a VSNL Internet connection. This connection was hella slow, connected to your landline phone, unreliable for most part, and cost a ton. It was also the greatest thing ever! The joy of surfing a shiny Geocities webpage with blinking text and giant comic sans titles is something hard to explain to a Gen Z-er, but we can try.
This week’s edition is about the early days of the Internet in India and you WON’T BELIEVE who one of the first Internet users in India was.
Things we learnt this week 🤓
How’s this for a Fun Fact: The actor Shammi Kapoor (yes, THE Shammi Kapoor) was actually one of the first Internet users in India. He set up the Internet Users Club of India, and along with folks such as Miheer Mafatlal, and they’d lug around an Apple Macintosh Performa 5400 to people’s homes and offices to show them what the Internet looked like. Sometime in 1994 was when Mafatlal got three beta accounts for Apple’s eWorld service as his company - Microgiga, had been selling a lot of Apple computers as desktop publishing solutions in India. When Apple launched the eWorld service, they identified a few people across the world to hand out beta access accounts to. Shammi Kapoor had one and so did Mafatlal and a few others. They even went to MF Hussain’s house for a demo. Shammi’s personal website is on Archive even today!
“How do you do, fellow kids?
The writers of this newsletter fondly remember a time when Internet parlors were a thing. Internet usage had to be rationed into a 30 minute window (or 1 hour if your parents were generous) on the weekends. The first ever Internet cafe in India opened in July 1996 at Hotel Leela Kempinski, Mumbai. It was set up by the renaissance man Pritish Nandy and they charged Rs 800 for an hour of Internet. It was simply named “CyberCafe”. Internet cafes are now unfortunately a relic of the past, slowly disappearing from our world just like pay phones and candy cigarettes.Here are some notable firsts in online India.
The first Indian bank to offer internet banking was ICICI, way back in 1998.
The first e-commerce website was fabmart.com - started in 1999 by K Vaitheeswaran. This was acquired by Aditya Birla Group and rebranded to More although Vaitheeswaran continued his marketplace under a new brand Indiaplaza.com.
And lastly, everyone’s favourite website - Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd aka IRCTC was launched in the early 2002. On the first day of launch only 27 tickets were booked on the website. Apparently even back then it was impossible to book tatkal tickets.
Quiz Alert 🔎
📣 Calling all Student Quiz Enthusiasts!
🤓Are you a passionate quizzer?
🚨Do you love sharing fun facts and engaging with your peers?
💥India Wants to Know is launching an exciting Campus Quiz Ambassador(CQA) Program for college students across the nation! More details below:
Only In India 🇮🇳
The internet manifested this into happening, with all the ‘Barbenheimer’ memes:
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❤️ IWTK