Imagine growing up on a foothill, with crystal clear water flowing near your house and you
catching fish in those waters. A television set was absent in the house so days
were spent running through the fields and generally having a great time,
growing up hale and hearty. Life is a journey and when this journey takes you
away from these surroundings, you comply with some sadness. And while living in
the city may have its benefits, the memories of one’s childhood are always
present in one’s consciousness.
Vincent Toscano lived such a life in
Chorao with its greenery, fresh fish, water and air. The journey he took
through life took him to Pune to live a life as an IT professional.
Career-wise, Pune made him. He also met his wife in that city and experienced
heartbreak when his father passed away in Pune. His father’s death brought back
memories of his childhood. Toscano was living the corporate life with all its
attendant pressure. In charge of five offsite units, he was on, 24 hours a day.
This was the schedule of his life as he spent 18 years on the corporate
treadmill. His yearly visits to Goa were an enjoyable experience but also
brought him face to face with the realities of life in his village. Friends he
grew up with were falling victim to alcohol and other vices. There was an
absence of aspiration.
He was reminded of his own years when he failed twice in the
12th standard. Thankfully for him, his father, an uneducated man, had the
foresight to help him register with Datapro in Panjim. This was the 1980s and
the then Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi had expressed his wish to take India into
the computer age. This prompted several companies to start training millions of
Indians in basic computer languages. Toscano learned basics and remembers how
he would travel in a local auto with fishmongers and his dad, who would go to
the market to sell the bags he would make. This training helped reignite his
interest in studies and he went on to study Engineering and topped the
university. His career took off and he gained knowledge, experience and the
confidence of getting tasks done within the scheduled targeted time. Computers,
Toscano said was a great invention and importantly, it would listen to anyone
who had the skills to handle it. The launch of the internet, he said, changed
everyone’s life. His careers at Tata Consultancy and then Infosys gave him a
perspective that would help him years later. His presence at Infosys was during
its years of rapid growth and he was involved in the creation of new packages.
He said, “It gave me a sense of accomplishment by creating something new.” An
avid reader, he read C K Prahalad, who talked about the importance of the
people at the bottom of the pyramid. He was also familiar with Mahatma Gandhi’s
vision that India lived in its villages and that was where the beauty lived.
According to Toscano, if the Mahatma had the internet, he would tell the people
of India that if anyone was interested in working on the charkha, they ought to
be working on the internet.
Now seriously contemplating with the idea of getting off the
corporate rat race and living life on his terms and doing so back home in
Chorao, he took the plunge after listening to a song sung by an Assamese
singer. The song was in a language he did not understand but he said it was
beautiful and would, in his opinion, be popular in any part of the world. This
made him question why no one from Goa had done that as yet. He resigned and
returned home, a move that shocked his friends. His argument was that if
someone could sit in a city and come up with solutions for companies, a kid in
the village could come up with it too whilst sitting under a tree or on the
banks of a river.
He said, “At the outset, many people did think it was crazy,
impractical and unviable for an IT business in Chorao but good friends and
those who knew my father’s work in our village provided the required encouragement
and support. Our Uzoorba team has grown from one employee in 2017 to nine
today.” Conducting business can be a rewarding experience but also a
frustrating experience. Goa can be a tough nut to crack due to the absence of
infrastructure. He said, “There is a perception that infrastructure in Goa is
good, it isn’t. Power supply is disrupted around 15-20 times a day, forcing us
to invest in an inverter. Accessing broadband is not easy and yes, accessing
talent is tough. Engineers pass out without understanding basic concepts. In
school, there are no role models, thus ensuring mediocrity rules.”
Concerned by this state of affairs, Toscano and other members of
the IT community came up with the RPi-4-Schools initiative. He said, “It was a
self-sustaining culmination of my work through GITPs (Goa IT Professionals)
Project GEIT (Goans Empowered with IT) which exposed the terrible plight of
Computer Education in our Goan village schools with nearly 17,000 students
going through SSC every year with barely any meaningful computer skills, which
is a severe handicap in the 21st century.” The long-term vision of this
initiative is to equip high school students with so much hands-on technical
computer skills (including programming, robotics, automation, AI/ML etc.) that
they create a push from within to transform the decaying mid and higher
education system and raise it to global standards.
Toscano
intends to expand his staff strength to approximately 40 or 50, employing young
men and women from his village and villages in the vicinity. He intends to show
everyone that world class work could be done from a village in Goa. He is a
firm believer in Mahatma Gandhi’s vision that India’s soul lived in the
villages and much can be achieved by the young boys and girls in the villages
provided they were given the motivation and shown the path.
