It was in August 1978, CSIR had awarded a grant to Prof. G. Sankaranarayanan of the Department of Statistics, Annamalai University, Annamalainagar for conducting a national Symposium on Queues, Inventories and Reliability. Many eminent scholars and researchers in Probability, Statistics and Stochastic Process had gathered at the feet of Lord Nataraja, Chidambaram. They mooted the idea of having similar gatherings of like minded people regularly, may be under the aegis of a society. Initially the topics of interest suggested were Probability and Stochastic Processes.

A core group met once again in S.V. University, Tirupati early in 1980 at the feet of Lord Venkateswara. Prof. M.P. Sastry of S.V. University, Prof. S.K. Srinivasan, of I.I.T., Madras and another enthusiast Prof. M.N. Gopalan of I.I.T. Bombay joined the group. All those present decided to name the Society as Indian Society for Theory of Probability and its Applications (ISTPA). The scope of Society now included Statistics and Stochastic Processes. Draft constitution was drawn up during a subsequent Conference at I.I.T. Bombay, in 1980.