Most of us depend on the “location services” on our smartphones to find a way to our destinations, anywhere on earth or at any time around the clock.
This has been made possible through a satellite-based radio navigation system called the Global Positioning System (GPS) developed by the US Defence Department.
How many of us know that a Malayali was in the core group of experts who developed the path-breaking GPS in the 1970s that revolutionised human life worldwide? And that he is the son of a firebrand Communist and trade union leader from Kannur?
This is the story of Dr. Mohan P Ananda (78), the Los Angeles-based billionaire, innovator, entrepreneur, lawyer, venture capitalist and author who has about 15 patents in his name for various technological innovations.
His father, K. Anandan Nambiar (1918-1991) was a prominent leader of railway workers and the first Communist in India to be elected to a provincial legislature. A three-time MP from the erstwhile Madras State, Nambiar was born to K. Kammaran Nambiar, a prosperous landlord of Kadachira in Kannur. The matrilineal system prevalent at the time prevented young Anandan from inheriting his father’s wealth, which went to the latter’s sisters and their children. This made him start working early in life for a livelihood.
When he was 20, Nambiar joined the Southern Railways as a fuel clerk in Trichinappalli in 1938. While in school, Nambiar had come under the spell of a teacher. He was A. K. Gopalan, an active Congress worker before he became the legendary Communist. Nambiar, who imbibed AKG’s political beliefs, was appalled by the suffering and exploitation faced by the railway workers who were treated like slaves by the colonial masters. Nambiar soon took up his fellow workers’ cause and organised them under the South Indian Railway Union. Though he underwent extreme repression, torture and arrests, Nambiar unrelentingly led many struggles and emerged as a working-class hero.
In 1946, Nambiar was elected as a Communist Party candidate to the Madras Provincial Assembly, representing the railway constituency reserved for railway employees of Southern Railway. Soon, he resigned to work full-time as the union's general secretary. Nambiar was elected thrice to the Lok Sabha from Madras State in 1952, 62 and 67, representing Mayavaram once and Trichinappalli twice. He won first on a CPI ticket and later twice as a CPI(M) candidate. Though Nambiar contested again from Tiruchirappalli in 1971, he was defeated by CPI’s M. Kalyanasundaram. “Until his death from a cardiac arrest in 1991, my father was actively involved in political and social activities. He died peacefully at home in Tiruchirappalli in the morning while reading newspapers,” recalled Mohan during a visit to Thiruvananthapuram with his wife, Dr Rajeswari who hails from Kanyakumari district.
Mohan went to school in Cherukunnu in Kannur when he lived with his maternal grandparents while his parents were away in Tiruchirappalli. Later, he graduated in mechanical engineering from the Coimbatore Institute of Technology (CIT) with distinction. While he was a college student, Mohan went for a screen test in Bombay, held by some film producers. He reached the final stage but missed the selection by a whisker to someone who later became a Bollywood superstar. Rajesh Khanna!
Mohan realised his dream of higher studies in the USA after graduation when four top universities offered him admission to master's. Opting California University of Technology (CALTECH), he flew to Los Angeles in 1967.
Was his father, a committed Communist, sore about him going to capitalist America? “Not at all. He was democratic enough to let me decide for myself on such issues. His key advice was not to be selfish and to carry along your fellow beings when you move forward”. Mohan said his father had asked him not to join politics unless willing to do selfless service. He remembers his father's arrest in 1964 when they were travelling together from the cyclone-ravaged Rameswaram. His arrest followed the Union Home Ministry orders to detain most Cpi-m leaders countrywide in the wake of the India-China war, accusing them of being pro-China.
Mohan completed his master’s in aeronautics with honours under Nobel laureates like the physicist Richard Feynman. Later he joined a firm which functioned under the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). It was the height of the Cold War, and NORAD was a US-Canada bi-national organisation charged with aerospace and maritime warning and control. His work included developing critical instruments for nuclear missile projects of very high confidentiality. During this time, Mohan also encountered another challenge: being drafted into the American defence forces to wage the Vietnam War.
Did he encounter a prick of conscience as the son of Anandan Nambiar to fight against Communist Vietnam? “Not quite. One important lesson my father taught me was to give back whatever possible to the society that has given me so much. America gave me an excellent education and a coveted job. I thought that by joining the American army, I would be paying back a debt”. However, Mohan was not drafted as the defence department wanted him more in America than on the war front.
However, this did not deter Mohan from campaigning for Senator Robert Kennedy, the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate, who was a powerful campaigner against the Vietnam War. Kennedy opposed racial discrimination against Blacks and championed civil rights and environmental protection. Mohan volunteered for Kennedy’s electoral campaign in California and attended his meeting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968. It was midnight when the meeting was over, and Mohan approached Kennedy and talked with him for a few minutes. Subsequently, as he was entering a car in front of the hotel, Mohan heard a commotion behind him. He got out to enquire and knew that Kennedy was shot inside the hotel! He was pronounced dead an hour later. “I was devastated and witnessed history being made for the first time in my life. My most terrifying moment ever,” Mohan wrote later in his memoirs- The Autobiography of an Immigrant. He has kept away from political activities since then.
After acquiring a Ph.D. in Astrodynamics from the University of California (UCLA), Mohan became a US citizen in 1973. His career as an entrepreneur began when he joined his friend’s company, Pan Science, as a partner. The company was involved in space engineering research and collaborated with NASA. Later, Mohan associated with various organisations like the Fujitsu of Japan for space research and the Jet Propulsion Lab of CALTECH, where he pioneered the development of the Optical Navigation System for Interplanetary satellite missions. During the 1980s, he worked with a professional group to develop the Global Positioning System (GPS) for the U.S. defence, which provides geolocation and time information to military, civil and commercial users worldwide.
Thirsty to conquer newer peaks, Mohan took a law degree in the early 1990s and started practising in California. Even as he got busy in the new profession, Mohan also launched many business enterprises, including stamps.com, one of the earliest e-commerce-based ventures even in the USA. It was a collaborative project with the US Postal Services that enabled people to print postage stamps online by themselves. The startup was sold in 2021 to Thoma Bravo, a top equity firm, recently at an enterprise value of more than $ 6.6 billion. Mohan now has investments in India, like in the Bengaluru-based Zoom Cars, a car-sharing platform and Envestnet, a financial services company which has an office in Thiruvananthapuram.
Will he invest more in Kerala? “I had proposed a power project while E K Nayanar was the Chief Minister, who was my relative also. But there was no follow-up action from the corrupt bureaucracy, which is the biggest bane here,”. He had his first experience of being asked for bribes in Thiruvananthapuram corporation.
Did he personally know any of his father's comrades? “AKG was like an uncle to me. He and his wife Susheela took us for dinner while we visited them after our marriage. I also knew Tamil Nadu’s Communists like Umanath, P. Ramamoorthi and many others who were my father’s close friends”. His view about Communism is that it will fail without economic growth or competition.
He remembers in his autobiography that when he was a child, his father took him to Prime Minister Nehru's residence in Delhi, where he played with his grandsons Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi.
Mohan and his wife recently met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Thiruvananthapuram. “It was a cordial meeting. He showed much regard to us”. But no investment plans? “Nothing was discussed with him, though I have an ayurveda project planned in Thiruvananthapuram”.
Hope Kerala woos him better.
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