Designed to Win: How Tata Elxsi found its niche in India's IT landscape

How the Tata company went from being a loss-making firm to becoming a front-runner in design and technology in India and globally

Designed to Win: The Tata Elxsi Story

By S Devarajan

Published by Penguin India

237 pages  ₹699

  Despite the sub-title, this volume is not entirely about Tata Elxsi. Half the book, or perhaps a bit more, is about the author, his childhood, his studies in IIT Kharagpur, his early career — in HCL (then Hindustan Computers Ltd) and OMC Computers — before he joins Tata Elxsi after being interviewed by the legendary F C Kohli. ( Kohli also gets a full chapter — mostly anecdotes of his interactions with the author.) 

This is not to say that the author’s life story overshadows the Tata Elxsi story. The book covers in good detail the years during which the author was associated with the company. He was with Tata Elxsi for just under a decade — having joined as general manager, marketing and then becoming the managing director, before he left to head Cisco India. Those years also saw the turnaround and stabilisation of Tata Elxsi, which stopped being a lossmaker and found the areas to focus on. 

S Devarajan also researched the founding of Elxsi in the United States, by Joe Rizzi and Thampy Thomas and their co-founders. This was necessary because Elxsi no longer exists — it was sold to Gene Amdhal, a renowned computer architect, in 1985. Later, Elxsi got out of the computer business, though Tata Elxsi retained its name. Ratan Tata wanted to drop the Elxsi name from the company and the author discussed different alternatives with his top team. But then, his chief  financial officer pointed out what a name change would entail — the company would need to send a letter to shareholders to get the majority to give their assent to the name change in an extraordinary general meeting. These were days before emails and the costs would be prohibitive for the organisation, which was not out of the woods yet financially. 

Mr Devarajan also talked to his successor who heads the company now to get updates (carried in the book) on the current status of the company. And that is good — many former leaders often forget (or try to reduce) the contributions of their predecessors and successors and amplify their own contributions. While Mr Devarajan doesn’t shy away from taking credit for the turnaround, he is careful not to make it a one-man story either. He is quick to laud his bosses and his colleagues who helped him on every bit of the journey. 

What makes the book work is Mr Devarajan’s narrative style. He manages a fine balance of talking about himself, his decisions at Tata Elxsi, and leading the turnaround without being either self-deprecating or self-laudatory. Instead, he chooses a matter-of-fact tone and lets the achievements speak for themselves. 

Tata Elxsi is not a huge IT company in terms of size — it clocked ₹3,729 crore as revenues for 2025. However, it is a strong player in India and several other countries in design and technology services in  automobiles, healthcare, broadcast and transportation. But the story is interesting because the company, especially in its early years, witnessed the rise and fall of numerous computer trends as well as iconic companies in Silicon Valley. 

Mr Devarajan was hired in a campus interview at IIT Kharagpur by HCL. He learnt from the legendary Arjun Malhotra, co-founder of the group. For those who are not acquainted with HCL’s history, it was a pioneer in designing and selling micro- and then mini-computers in India and one of the great innovators of computer design in the 1970s and 1980s. Later, Mr Devarajan joined ICIM — selling mainframes — for a short while in India before moving to OMC and then Tata Elxsi.

 

When he was hired by Tata Elxsi, the company was selling Elxsi computers and later, after Elxsi lost ground and exited the business, moved on to use Silicon Graphics workstations. Tata Elxsi would partner with several other rising (and now defunct) computer companies of Silicon Valley before it found its calling — in the design and technology integration business, providing high end services to a handful of industries that require specialised design work, using computer-aided design  and computer-aided manufacturing. One of the more interesting parts of the book gives a glimpse into the way the Tatas looked at the emerging field of IT in the 1970s and 1980s. F C Kohli had started TCS. TCS also had a partnership with Burroughs Corporation, which was a big name in mainframes. Ratan Tata had travelled to the US and been intrigued by Elxsi. Along with venture capitalists like Arthur Rock, the Tatas had invested in the US startup.

 

The group wanted to do both research & development and manufacturing of computers in India. Despite legal hurdles because of the US and Indian government regulations relating to computers, Ratan Tata and his team found workarounds, including the partnership with Elxsi’s Singapore arm, because the US did not want the technology to come to India.

 

These developments make the reader wonder, therefore, why the Tatas did not spot the new burst of artificial intelligence innovation in the 2010s. Why didn’t the Tata group fund promising startups in GenAI and other technology innovations around the world when investing abroad is much easier now. Those questions will probably wait for another author and another book. 

 

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The reviewer is former editor of Businessworld and Business Today magazines, and author of Will India Get Rich Before It Turns 100? A Reality