IT Companies: Founders, Years and Headquarters
Notes on IT companies for competitive exams: founders, founding years and headquarters of global and Indian technology firms, with acquisitions and Indian IT firsts.
By GK24 Editorial Team· Published · 3 min read
Computer Awareness papers in SSC, Banking and Railway examinations reserve two or three marks every year for the companies that built the information technology industry. The questions are of a fixed pattern: who founded a company, in which year, and where its headquarters is. These are stable facts, because a founding year never changes and a company's main office moves rarely, which is why paper setters like them. The safest way to prepare is to learn the company along with three things together, the founder, the year and the city, and then add the famous acquisitions and the firsts of the Indian IT story. Chief executives, revenues and rankings change from year to year, so they are poor material for static General Knowledge and are better left to current affairs.
Global technology companies
| Company | Founder | Year | Headquarters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | Bill Gates and Paul Allen | 1975 | Redmond, Washington, USA |
| Apple | Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne | 1976 | Cupertino, California |
| Larry Page and Sergey Brin | 1998 | Mountain View, California | |
| Amazon | Jeff Bezos | 1994 | Seattle, Washington |
| Intel | Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore | 1968 | Santa Clara, California |
| IBM | Charles Ranlett Flint, as CTR | 1911 | Armonk, New York |
| Adobe | John Warnock and Charles Geschke | 1982 | San Jose, California |
| Nvidia | Jensen Huang and partners | 1993 | Santa Clara, California |
| Hewlett-Packard | Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard | 1939 | Palo Alto, California |
| Dell | Michael Dell | 1984 | Round Rock, Texas |
| Cisco | Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner | 1984 | San Jose, California |
| Alibaba | Jack Ma | 1999 | Hangzhou, China |
| Huawei | Ren Zhengfei | 1987 | Shenzhen, China |
| Sony | Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita | 1946 | Tokyo, Japan |
Three of these names need a footnote. IBM began life in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and took the name International Business Machines in 1924; Thomas J. Watson is the man who built it into a giant. Facebook, started by Mark Zuckerberg and four classmates at Harvard in 2004, renamed its parent company Meta Platforms in October 2021 and works from Menlo Park, California. Google reorganised itself in 2015 under a new holding company called Alphabet Inc., so Google is today a subsidiary of Alphabet.
Indian IT companies
| Company | Founder | Year | Headquarters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tata Consultancy Services | J. R. D. Tata, built up by F. C. Kohli | 1968 | Mumbai |
| Wipro | M. H. Hasham Premji, later led by Azim Premji | 1945 | Bengaluru |
| HCL | Shiv Nadar and colleagues | 1976 | Noida |
| Infosys | N. R. Narayana Murthy with six colleagues | 1981 | Bengaluru |
| Tech Mahindra | Mahindra group with British Telecom | 1986 | Pune |
| Zoho | Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas | 1996 | Chennai, Tamil Nadu |
| Flipkart | Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal | 2007 | Bengaluru |
| Paytm, One97 Communications | Vijay Shekhar Sharma | 2010 | Noida |
| Ola | Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati | 2010 | Bengaluru |
Wipro is the favourite trick question of this topic: it was registered in 1945 as Western India Vegetable Products Limited, a maker of vanaspati oil, and turned to computers only in the late nineteen seventies. Infosys was founded at Pune in 1981 with a very small capital and shifted to Bengaluru the next year. HCL stands for Hindustan Computers Limited, and its founder Shiv Nadar also set up the HCL Technology school and a foundation for education.
Acquisitions worth remembering
- Google bought YouTube in 2006 and had bought Android Incorporated in 2005.
- Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, the second for about nineteen billion dollars.
- Microsoft bought Skype in 2011, LinkedIn in 2016 and GitHub in 2018.
- IBM bought the open-source company Red Hat, the deal closing in 2019.
- Walmart bought a controlling stake in Flipkart in 2018, then the largest such deal in Indian e-commerce.
Firsts of the Indian IT industry
- F. C. Kohli, the first general manager of TCS, is called the father of the Indian IT industry.
- Infosys became the first Indian company to be listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 1999.
- NASSCOM, the industry body of Indian software and services companies, was set up in 1988 with its office in New Delhi.
- C-DAC, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing at Pune, was set up in 1988 and built the PARAM series of supercomputers.
- STPI, Software Technology Parks of India, was set up in 1991 under the IT ministry to promote software exports.
Exam Point of View
Questions come in three shapes. First, a single fact: the headquarters of a named company, or its founder, or its founding year. Second, a matching set in which four companies must be paired with four cities or four founders. Third, the trick items, which are the ones that decide the mark: the old name of Wipro, the city where Infosys was founded as against where it is now headquartered, the original name of IBM, the year Alphabet was created, and the fact that HCL stands for Hindustan Computers Limited. Learn the pair of cities carefully, since Santa Clara, San Jose, Cupertino, Mountain View and Menlo Park all lie in the same valley and are used as distractors for one another. Avoid memorising chief executives and revenue ranks; those belong to current affairs, not to static GK.
Important Facts
| Microsoft | 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, headquarters Redmond, Washington |
|---|---|
| Apple | 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, headquarters Cupertino |
| 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, headquarters Mountain View, California | |
| Alphabet Inc. | Created in 2015 as the holding company of Google |
| Amazon | 1994, Jeff Bezos, headquarters Seattle, Washington |
| Meta Platforms | Facebook renamed its parent company Meta in October 2021; headquarters Menlo Park |
| Intel | 1968, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, headquarters Santa Clara |
| IBM | Began 1911 as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, renamed IBM in 1924, headquarters Armonk, New York |
| TCS | 1968, Tata group, headquarters Mumbai |
| Wipro old name | Western India Vegetable Products Limited, registered 1945 |
| Infosys | Founded 1981 at Pune by N. R. Narayana Murthy and six colleagues; headquarters Bengaluru |
| HCL | Hindustan Computers Limited, 1976, Shiv Nadar, headquarters Noida |
| Father of Indian IT industry | Faqir Chand Kohli, the first general manager of TCS |
| First Indian company on NASDAQ | Infosys, in 1999 |
| NASSCOM | Set up in 1988, office at New Delhi |
| C-DAC | Set up in 1988 at Pune; makes the PARAM supercomputers |
Practice MCQs on this topic
The headquarters of Microsoft Corporation is located at
- A.Cupertino, California
- B.Redmond, Washington
- C.Armonk, New York
- D.Seattle, Washington
Show answer
Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen at Albuquerque in New Mexico, moved to the Seattle area in 1979 and has had its main campus at Redmond in Washington state ever since.
Read the full explanation →Google was founded by which pair of students at Stanford University?
- A.Bill Gates and Paul Allen
- B.Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
- C.Larry Page and Sergey Brin
- D.Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore
Show answer
Larry Page and Sergey Brin were research students at Stanford University when they built a search engine that ranked pages by the links pointing to them, and they registered Google as a company in 1998.
Read the full explanation →Infosys was founded in 1981 in which city?
- A.Bengaluru
- B.Pune
- C.Mumbai
- D.Hyderabad
Show answer
Infosys was started in 1981 at Pune by N. R. Narayana Murthy together with six colleagues, among them Nandan Nilekani, S. Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K. Dinesh, N. S. Raghavan and Ashok Arora, with a very small amount of borrowed capital.
Read the full explanation →Wipro was registered in 1945 under which original name?
- A.Western India Vegetable Products Limited
- B.Hindustan Computers Limited
- C.Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company
- D.Western India Petroleum Products Limited
Show answer
The company was registered in 1945 by M. H. Hasham Premji and made vanaspati cooking oil and laundry soap at Amalner in Maharashtra.
Read the full explanation →HCL, one of the earliest Indian computer companies, was founded in 1976 by
- A.Azim Premji
- B.Shiv Nadar
- C.N. R. Narayana Murthy
- D.F. C. Kohli
Show answer
Shiv Nadar and a group of colleagues left their jobs at an electronics firm and set up Hindustan Computers Limited, shortened to HCL, in 1976 to design and sell Indian-made microcomputers.
Read the full explanation →The semiconductor company Intel was founded in 1968 by
- A.Jensen Huang and Curtis Priem
- B.John Warnock and Charles Geschke
- C.Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore
- D.Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner
Show answer
Robert Noyce, one of the inventors of the integrated circuit, and Gordon Moore, who gave the observation known as Moore's law that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years, left an earlier firm and founded Intel in 1968.
Read the full explanation →Alphabet Inc., the holding company of Google, was created in which year?
- A.2010
- B.2013
- C.2015
- D.2018
Show answer
Google reorganised its businesses in 2015 and placed them under a new holding company named Alphabet Inc. Google continued as the subsidiary running search, advertising, Android, Chrome, Maps and YouTube, while separate ventures such as the self-driving car company and the life sciences company were made direct subsidiaries of Alphabet.
Read the full explanation →Who is known as the father of the Indian information technology industry?
- A.F. C. Kohli
- B.Vikram Sarabhai
- C.Sam Pitroda
- D.Vijay Bhatkar
Show answer
Faqir Chand Kohli was the first general manager and later deputy chairman of Tata Consultancy Services, and he is credited with creating the model on which Indian software exports grew, namely training engineering graduates in programming and selling their services to clients abroad.
Read the full explanation →The headquarters of the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba is located at
- A.Shenzhen
- B.Beijing
- C.Hangzhou
- D.Shanghai
Show answer
Alibaba was started in 1999 by Jack Ma, a former English teacher, in his apartment in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, and the company has kept its headquarters in that city.
Read the full explanation →Adobe, the company behind PostScript, PDF and Photoshop, was founded in 1982 by
- A.Michael Dell and Jensen Huang
- B.John Warnock and Charles Geschke
- C.Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard
- D.Jerry Yang and David Filo
Show answer
The two left a research centre in California and founded Adobe in 1982 at San Jose, naming it after a creek near Warnock's home.
Read the full explanation →The headquarters of Tata Consultancy Services, India's oldest large software services company, is in
- A.Bengaluru
- B.Noida
- C.Mumbai
- D.Pune
Show answer
Tata Consultancy Services was set up in 1968 as a division of the Tata group to provide management consultancy and data processing, and its registered office and headquarters have remained in Mumbai, the home city of the group.
Read the full explanation →Frequently Asked Questions
What was the original name of Wipro?
Wipro was registered in 1945 as Western India Vegetable Products Limited by M. H. Hasham Premji, and it made vanaspati cooking oil and soaps. The company entered the computer hardware and software business in the late nineteen seventies under Azim Premji, and the shortened name Wipro was adopted for the group. Its headquarters is at Bengaluru.
Where is the headquarters of Infosys, and where was it founded?
Infosys has its headquarters at Electronics City in Bengaluru, Karnataka, but it was founded in 1981 in Pune by N. R. Narayana Murthy along with six colleagues, among them Nandan Nilekani, S. Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K. Dinesh, N. S. Raghavan and Ashok Arora. The company shifted to Bengaluru in 1982.
Who is called the father of the Indian IT industry?
Faqir Chand Kohli, usually written F. C. Kohli, is called the father of the Indian IT industry. He was the first general manager and later the deputy chairman of Tata Consultancy Services, and he built the practice of training engineering graduates in software and exporting their services, which became the model of the whole Indian industry.
What is the difference between Google and Alphabet?
Alphabet Inc. is the holding company created in 2015 when Google reorganised itself. Google remains the subsidiary that runs search, advertising, Android, Chrome and YouTube, while other ventures such as Waymo and Verily sit directly under Alphabet. The shares that trade on the stock exchange are Alphabet shares, and the headquarters of both is at Mountain View in California.
Which companies did Microsoft and Facebook buy?
Microsoft bought Skype in 2011, the professional network LinkedIn in 2016 and the code-sharing platform GitHub in 2018, and it had earlier taken over the devices business of Nokia. Facebook, now Meta, bought the photo-sharing application Instagram in 2012 and the messaging application WhatsApp in 2014, the latter for about nineteen billion dollars.
What does HCL stand for?
HCL stands for Hindustan Computers Limited. It was founded in 1976 by Shiv Nadar with a group of colleagues who had left an earlier job to make their own microcomputers, and it was among the first Indian companies to build and sell computer hardware. Its headquarters is at Noida in Uttar Pradesh.
Sources
- Annual Report: the electronics and information technology sector — Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India
- About us: history and milestones of the company — Tata Consultancy Services
- Centre for Development of Advanced Computing: mandate and the PARAM series — C-DAC, Government of India
