How Bollywood legend Shammi Kapoor became India’s first internet pioneer

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Picture this: it’s the summer of 1994, and while most of India is still discovering colour televisions, something extraordinary is unfolding in an apartment in Malabar Hill, Mumbai. Behind the closed doors of his study, sat a man hunched over an Apple Macintosh, his fingers dancing across the keyboard with an unmatched enthusiasm.

This wasn’t some Silicon Valley visionary working on the next big thing in tech. This was Shammi Kapoor, the Bollywood legend who was known for his gyrating dance moves and rebellious charm. But instead of a script, here he was navigating Apple’s eWorld, an early version of what is today known as the internet. Little would he have known at the time that he was about to become India’s most unlikely digital evangelist.

The second act

By the early 1990s, Kapoor was already at the end of what can only be described as a legendary career in Bollywood. From his breakthrough role in Tumsa Nahin Dekha (1957) to iconic performances in Kashmir Ki Kali and An Evening in Paris, he had spent three decades as the heartthrob who taught the Indian audience how to be young, wild, and free. But as the ’90s dawned, film offers were becoming fewer.

The industry was moving towards a different kind of hero, one more grounded, more realistic. For most actors of his generation, this would have been the cue to settle into character roles or gracefully retreat from the limelight. Kapoor, however, had never been one to follow the conventional path.

Instead of looking back at his golden years, he looked forward towards something that would have seemed sci-fi to most Indians at the time: the emerging world of digital communication. It was 1994, and while India’s telecom revolution was still in its infancy, Kapoor was already exploring virtual communities and electronic mails.

“I discovered internet before you got internet in India. The British telecom gave us a line through VSNL, even though VSNL was not available at that time, and I took it up as a hobby,” he would later recall in an interview.

“That was an eye-opener…something completely new. And by the time internet came to India, we were already the first marchers,” he added.

Internet was actually introduced in India way back in 1986, but it took over a decade for it to be made available to the public. It was Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), which brought the country’s citizens online on August 15, 1995.

Transitioning from analogue to the digital world

The story of how this flamboyant actor became India’s first internet celebrity begins with an Apple computer and an insatiable curiosity. Just as he had once studied Western dance forms and rock ‘n’ roll to bring something fresh to Indian cinema, Kapoor wanted to know everything about this mysterious new medium.

Through Apple’s eWorld, Kapoor was already sending emails, joining discussion groups, and learning everything possible about the digital world. What made this journey particularly fascinating was how naturally his showman instincts translated to this new medium.

In the early years, when most early Indian internet users were academics or tech professionals, Kapoor stood out with the flair of an entertainer. He was crafting emails with attention to narratives, and also envisioning what digital content could look like. As Kapoor’s confidence with the medium grew, so did his ambitions. He wanted to be a creator, way before an internet creator was ever a thing.

Building lasting digital memories

While most Indians were still trying to understand what the internet even was, Kapoor was many steps ahead as he launched junglee.org.in. Despite what it might sound, this was anything but a vanity project. It was essentially a curated online museum chronicling the Kapoor family’s contribution to Indian cinema.

The website became a fascinating time capsule, featuring rare photographs, behind-the-scenes stories, film clips, and family anecdotes that provided an intimate glimpse into one of Bollywood’s most influential families. Visitors could explore detailed filmographies, read about the evolution of Indian cinema, and even send messages to Kapoor himself; a level of celebrity accessibility that was unimaginable in pre-digital India.

What made junglee.org.in particularly remarkable was its timing. In 1996, personal websites were rare even in the West, and the concept of celebrities having their own digital presence was virtually unheard of in India. Kapoor wasn’t just creating content; he was establishing an entirely new paradigm for how Indian artists could connect with their audiences.

The Internet Users Community of India

Beyond his personal projects, Kapoor also took on the role of a digital evangelist by becoming the chairman of the Internet Users Community of India (IUCI). Formed in 1995, this user group was at the forefront of India’s internet awareness movement, with the objective of lobbying on behalf of net surfers. Having Kapoor as its public face gave the organisation a credibility and visibility that no amount of technical expertise could have provided.

The IUCI wasn’t just a club for tech enthusiasts; it was Kapoor’s platform for demystifying internet for ordinary Indians. This enthusiastic bunch of users would reportedly carry an Apple Macintosh Performa 5400 from place to place just to demonstrate what the internet looked like and what it could do.

Just as he had once made young Indians feel that it was okay to rebel through his screen persona, Kapoor now made them excited about exploring this digital frontier. He spoke about email with the same passion he once reserved for his films’ heroines, and he demonstrated web browsing with theatrics that would leave the audiences amazed.

Streaming before the Netflix-era

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Kapoor’s digital journey was his uncanny ability to envision what this platform could eventually become. Years before YouTube made video sharing commonplace, Kapoor was experimenting with what he called “Shammi Kapoor Unplugged”.

This was a series of video diaries where he shared thoughts about cinema, life, and technology. These weren’t polished productions; they were intimate, conversational pieces. In many ways, he was creating vlogs before the term even existed.

In interviews throughout the late 1990s, he consistently argued that audiences would eventually watch movies on their personal devices rather than in theatres. “People will watch films on their mobiles,” Kapoor predicted in 1998, at a time when most Indians were still marveling at the basic functionality of mobile phones. “The theatre experience will change. Entertainment will become personal, on-demand, and available everywhere.”

Today, as we casually binge on our favourite web content on platforms like Netflix, Hotstar or Prime Video, Kapoor’s predictions read less like speculations, and more like a roadmap of our digital future.

He also foresaw how the internet would revolutionise human connections. He would speak about how the medium helped him get in touch with people from his past. “I reconnected with people I thought were lost forever,” he marveled. “The internet doesn’t just share information; it shares memories, emotions, relationships.”

The real revolution

While Kapoor was exploring this digital world, India’s internet revolution was gathering pace behind the scenes. And it is during this phase that Kapoor’s contributions become clearer.

In the mid-1990s, when the internet still felt alien and intimidating to most Indians, he provided a familiar face. He took something foreign and made it feel Indian, something complex and made it feel accessible, something intimidating and made it feel exciting. By openly embracing the internet and sharing his journey, he helped normalise the idea of digital adoption for an entire generation of Indians.

Think of him as India’s first “influencer”. Not in today’s social media sense, but someone who truly influenced others to try something new. His stardom gave legitimacy to a medium that many still viewed with suspicion or didn’t fully understand.

Undying love for technology

As Kapoor entered his seventies, his enthusiasm for digital innovation only intensified. Even as his health began to decline and he was required to undergo regular dialysis, he refused to disconnect from the digital world.

His hospital room, equipped with Wi-Fi and multiple devices, became a mini digital studio where he continued to blog, email friends, and work on digital projects. Nurses and doctors were often surprised to find their elderly patient more tech-savvy than their own children.

When Kapoor passed away in 2011, India was on the cusp of its greatest digital transformation. The smartphone revolution was just beginning, and the groundwork was being laid for the democratisation of mobile internet that would bring millions of Indians online.

He didn’t live to see the explosion of digital content, the rise of streaming platforms, or the emergence of Indian YouTube creators. But in many ways, the digital India that emerged in the 2010s bore the imprint of the vision he had articulated decades earlier.

Today, every Indian with a smartphone carries more computing power than the Apple Macintosh that first introduced Kapoor to cyberspace. We stream movies during commutes, videocall with relatives across oceans, and build entire careers around digital content creation. All behaviours that seemed fantastical when Kapoor was first logging into his email account.

His approach to technology was refreshingly free of cynicism or calculation. It was driven by the same sense of wonder that had made him one of cinema’s greatest performers. The next time you use the internet, remember the man who saw it all coming when the rest of India was just learning to spell “email”.

Shammi Kapoor wasn’t just Bollywood’s eternal junglee, he was India’s first digital dreamer.