ROOTS & WINGS
THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY
ROOTS & WINGS
Building India’s Deep Tech Ecosystem
Building India’s Deep Tech Ecosystem
“India is racing to become technologically sovereign. We need to pause and honour those who laid the foundation for this — who worked tirelessly, long before it became policy, to build the ground we now stand on.”
In March 2024, Forbes India called Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala India’s ‘Doyen of Deep Tech.’ But those who worked with him knew this long before any label arrived. Roots & Wings is his authorised biography — the story of how one professor’s relentless belief in India built the backbone of its technological future: from the corDECT wireless revolution that brought affordable telephony to rural India, to the IITM Research Park — India’s largest industry-academia collaboration platform — to the incubation of 350+ startups, including unicorns like Uniphore and category-defining companies like Ather Energy.
Written by Saloni Malhotra, who first met Dr. Jhunjhunwala in 2004 and worked with him for seven years building her startup, the book captures the ideas, the struggles, the institutions, and the people shaped by his mentorship — and how they continue to power India’s Deep Tech revolution.
“This book is dedicated to the community of people who helped build India’s deep-tech ecosystem at IITM Research Park, and to the youth of India, who will carry this work forward and lead the country to a technologically sovereign future.”
Padma Shri Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala (born 22 June 1953, Kolkata) is Institute Professor at IIT Madras, where he has been a faculty member since 1981. A graduate of IIT Kanpur (B.Tech, Electrical Engineering) and the University of Maine (PhD), he is the founder of the Telecommunications and Computer Networks (TeNeT) group, the IITM Research Park, and the IITM Incubation Cell. Today, as Chairman of ITEL — India’s Immersive Technology and Entrepreneurship Labs — he is still at it.
Over four decades, Dr. Jhunjhunwala has led India’s deep tech revolution across telecom, energy, banking, and electric vehicles — always with one conviction: that technology must serve India’s masses, not just its elite. He served as Principal Advisor to the Ministry of Power and Ministry of Railways, Government of India, and is currently Chairman of the CSIR Advisory Board. He has served on the boards of State Bank of India, Bharat Electronics Limited, Tata Communications, Mahindra Electric, Tejas Networks, and SEBI’s Technology Advisory Committee.
Saloni Malhotra is an entrepreneur and an author. She spent seven years (2005–2012) working alongside Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala at IIT Madras. She watched him build the infrastructure, train the founders, and shape the ideas that India is now betting its future on. She wrote this book because she believes the story of how India got here matters as much as where it is going.
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