F.C. Kohli on White-Space Creation

After retirement, Kohli remained engaged with technology advocacy — driving efforts in adult literacy, water purification and regional language computing, and advising TCS — explicitly framing his post-CEO decades as the time to deploy computing for India's social problems rather than for export revenue alone.

Politician and author Sudheendra Kulkarni quoted Kohli saying 'our industry has benefited, but India has not benefited much from our industry. We have to do more, a lot more, for India.' — a self-critique that the Queen's piece frames as the motivation behind his post-retirement work in adult literacy, water purification and education.

Kohli stepped down as TCS CEO in 1996 and continued to promote technology to solve India's social problems — a transition the obituary frames as the moment his personal mission shifted from commercial IT-services exports to public-interest computing in adult literacy, water purification and regional-language tools.

Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekaran, in a statement, said Kohli led innovations 'in areas far-ranging from adult literacy, water purification, software engineering, software automation, complex-systems and cybernetics' — a breadth of curiosity that the obituary presents as the hallmark of his post-CEO decades.