How V. Kamakoti Turned Setbacks into Technological Strength

The summer of 1980 was supposed to be about cricket. Instead, it became the day that quietly changed a young boy’s life forever.

In the courtyard of a modest home in Mylapore, a seventh-grade boy stood in disbelief as his father walked to an old stone well. Without saying much, he lifted his son’s cherished cricket bat and dropped it into the darkness below. The sound of the bat striking the walls before disappearing into the water lingered long after it was gone.

A few days earlier, a fierce bouncer during a local cricket match had shattered the boy’s spectacles. His father, the renowned Sanskrit scholar and logician Prof. N. Veezhinathan, wasn’t angry - he was deeply worried. He feared that another such blow could permanently damage his son’s eyesight.

Then he handed the boy a violin. “If you want to master precision, master this instead.”

The boy was heartbroken. For weeks, he struggled to accept his father’s decision. Cricket had been his passion. But slowly, the disappointment gave way to determination. He picked up the violin, and with the same intensity he had once reserved for cricket, immersed himself in music.

Years of disciplined practice transformed him into an accomplished Carnatic violinist. He performed alongside some of India’s finest musicians and was fortunate to receive guidance and corrections from Bharat Ratna M.S. Subbulakshmi. Looking back, it is easy to see that the violin taught him far more than music - it instilled patience, precision, discipline, and the ability to pursue perfection through relentless practice.

Life, however, had another setback waiting. In 1985, he failed to clear the IIT-JEE examination.

For many students, that single result would have become a lifelong burden. But he refused to let one examination define his future.

He joined a regional engineering college, where he immersed himself in computer science, digital logic, and the fascinating world of processor design. He quietly built his knowledge, one concept at a time, without fanfare or shortcuts.

Years later, persistence brought him to IIT Madras as a postgraduate researcher. He earned his PhD, joined the faculty, inspired generations of students, and eventually became the Director of the very institution to which he had aspired in 1985. Failure had not closed the door. It had simply taken him on a different route.

By 2011, while much of the technological world was focused on smartphones, apps, and the consumer internet, Professor Veezhinathan Kamakoti was thinking about a challenge that received far less public attention. Much of India’s critical digital infrastructure depended on foreign-designed processors. That dependence raised a profound question. If a nation relies on processors designed elsewhere for critical systems, how much control does it truly have over its technological future?

Rather than merely discussing the problem, he chose to become part of the solution. His vision was ambitious: build an industrial-grade processor architecture designed in India. Many believed it was unrealistic. The semiconductor industry was dominated by global giants with decades of experience, enormous investments, and highly specialized ecosystems. To many, it seemed like an impossible dream.

His team never argued. They simply got to work. Using the open-source RISC-V instruction set as their foundation, they spent years designing processor logic, mapping silicon layouts, verifying billions of instruction cycles, and solving one engineering challenge after another. It was painstaking work, requiring extraordinary patience and attention to detail.

Then came July 2018. A tiny 16-square-millimetre silicon chip, codenamed RISECREEK, returned from fabrication. The laboratory grew silent. The team connected the chip. Power was switched on. Seconds felt like minutes. Then the monitor flickered to life. Linux booted successfully.

It was a landmark moment for India’s indigenous processor journey - a powerful demonstration that world-class processor design could emerge from Indian laboratories through perseverance, collaboration, and scientific excellence.

That achievement became a major milestone in the SHAKTI processor program, strengthening India’s capabilities in indigenous processor design and secure computing, with collaborations extending to strategic and space-related technologies.

Yet, perhaps the most remarkable part of Professor Kamakoti’s story lies not in the awards he received or the positions he held. It lies in the values he chose to preserve.

Even after becoming Director of IIT Madras, he chose not to move into the official Director’s residence. He continued living in his family home, where he could care for and preserve the priceless Sanskrit library lovingly built by his late father. It was a quiet tribute to the man who had once thrown a cricket bat into a well - not to destroy a dream, but to protect a child and gently redirect his future.

Looking back, the story almost feels poetic.

-       The little boy who lost his cricket bat.

-       The violinist who learned that discipline is built one note at a time.

-       The teenager who missed the IIT-JEE list.

-       The engineer who refused to let failure define him.

-       The teacher who entered the institution he had lost - not as a student, but as its Director.

Professor Veezhinathan Kamakoti’s journey is a reminder that life rarely unfolds in a straight line. Setbacks often disguise themselves as endings when they are, in fact, new beginnings. One failed examination does not determine a lifetime. One lost dream does not erase the possibility of another. Sometimes the greatest achievements are sustained by the quiet determination to keep moving forward.