The Catalysis Society of India (CSI) was formally founded in March 1973 at Banaras with Prof. S.K. Bhattacharyya as the president and Prof. J.C. Kuriacose as the secretary. The main mandates of the CSI are to encourage catalysis research in India, to organize professional meetings between researchers, to enhance mutual interactions and to encourage cooperation between industry and academia. The growth of the membership of the CSI is a measure of the growth of catalysis research activity in the country. The present membership of the society is in excess of 750 compared to 75 in 1974. At the time of the founding of the CSI, the major centers of research in catalysis were just a handful, the IITs (Madras and Kharagpur), PDIL (Sindhri), IIP (Dehradun) and IPCL/RIL (Vadodara). Catalysis research activity has spread to many more organizations during the past 42 years. During the last three decades, the catalysis community in India has made significant strides both in applied and fundamental research. Many catalysts and processes have been developed and commercialized, notably by IIP, PDIL, IPCL/RIL, NCL, IICT and ACC in petroleum refining, petrochemicals manufacture, fertilizers production and fine chemicals synthesis. In basic research also, members of the CSI have made significant discoveries in catalysis resulting in publications in prestigious journals such as Nature, Science, Angew Chem and JACS. In catalysis education only the IITs and a few universities were active during the 1970s