I don’t quite know how I landed on the website “mafatlal.co.in” on the Internet Archive. But it led me into a rabbit hole of the early days of the Internet in India. mafatlal.co.in was one of the first domains registered with a “.in” TLD. It was owned by a rich businessman called Miheer Mafatlal. Here is a picture of him:
Wow, I had no idea Shammi Kapoor wrote his own website and hosted it back in the day, and was otherwise so hooked by the internet. Could totally see him being an engineer working in tech in a different time and place.
Excellent piece. Keep up the good work. I remember those early days of internet in India. My email ID on VSNL read del07@. The seventh recipient of a BSNL account in Delhi
Excellent piece. Keep up the good work. I remember those early days of internet in India. My email ID on VSNL read del07@. The seventh recipient of a BSNL account in Delhi
Great piece! Hope to read more from your web scrolling archive. I made a substack account just to subscribe to this news letter (it seemed I had a dormant account, but we are back)
When VSNL launched the public dial up access to Internet in 1995, we, the group called IUCI, had already worked with them for a few months. A small fortunate group of us got access to "eWorld.com" the online service available only on Macs, on a local dial up access (on landlines) and free (official charges were $10 per hour). This, in turn, took us to the then WWW.
We were doing some of the things that, Pea Bee, you have caught in your search. We did a lot of evangelising in the physical world too. Imagine taking along the Mac (Colour Classic), a dial up modem, a projector, projecting on a wall or on a screen, and showing what Internet was and could be, to a college ground full of students. That was a good experience then.
For anyone interested, check out an article that appeared years later on these early days.
Love how thorough the article is, it blew my mind. I wonder how Shammi Kapoor got into coding, if he ever talked about it in his interviews. (You should become a tech reporter)
Wow, I had no idea Shammi Kapoor wrote his own website and hosted it back in the day, and was otherwise so hooked by the internet. Could totally see him being an engineer working in tech in a different time and place.
Excellent piece. Keep up the good work. I remember those early days of internet in India. My email ID on VSNL read del07@. The seventh recipient of a BSNL account in Delhi
Excellent piece. Keep up the good work. I remember those early days of internet in India. My email ID on VSNL read del07@. The seventh recipient of a BSNL account in Delhi
Great piece! Hope to read more from your web scrolling archive. I made a substack account just to subscribe to this news letter (it seemed I had a dormant account, but we are back)
Just loved this piece
Man what an awesome article.
When VSNL launched the public dial up access to Internet in 1995, we, the group called IUCI, had already worked with them for a few months. A small fortunate group of us got access to "eWorld.com" the online service available only on Macs, on a local dial up access (on landlines) and free (official charges were $10 per hour). This, in turn, took us to the then WWW.
We were doing some of the things that, Pea Bee, you have caught in your search. We did a lot of evangelising in the physical world too. Imagine taking along the Mac (Colour Classic), a dial up modem, a projector, projecting on a wall or on a screen, and showing what Internet was and could be, to a college ground full of students. That was a good experience then.
For anyone interested, check out an article that appeared years later on these early days.
https://www.livemint.com/Industry/R3kgewhIhKscbiELV1sHZM/The-birth-of-the-Internet-in-India.html
Pandyan
Love how thorough the article is, it blew my mind. I wonder how Shammi Kapoor got into coding, if he ever talked about it in his interviews. (You should become a tech reporter)