Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy (born 20 August, 1946) is an Indian IT industrialist and the co-

founder of Infosys,[8] a multinational corporation providing business consulting, technology, engineering,

and outsourcing services.
Narayana was born into a middle class family in Mysore. Since his father was a high-school teacher, the
financial conditions of the family were not that good. Narayana attended a government school and
pursued his B.E degree from the University of Mysore and masters from IIT, Kanpur.

Narayana is married to Sudha Murthy, who too is an engineer, an Indian social worker and an
accomplished author.

Narayana's wife being a philanthropist, he too believes in philanthropy. Murthy comes across as a very
social and friendly man. He always raises his voice for various social issues in the country such as
elections, unemployment, poverty etc. He is a cooperative and a good natured person and manages his
company quite well. The recent news of him quitting Infosys has been keeping him in the headlines.

Murthy studied electrical engineering at the National Institute of Engineering, University of

Mysore,[9] and MTech at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
Before starting Infosys, Murthy worked with Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad as chief
systems programmer and Patni Computer Systems in Pune (Maharashtra). He started Infosys in 1981 and
served as its CEO from 1981 to 2002 and as chairman from 2002 to 2011. In 2011, he stepped down from
the board and became chairman Emeritus. On 1 June 2013, Murthy was appointed as Additional Director
and Executive Chairman of the board for a period of five years.[10][11]
Murthy has been listed among the 12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time by Fortune magazine.[12] He has
been described as the "father of the Indian IT sector" by Time magazine due to his contribution to
outsourcing in India.[13] Murthy has also been honoured with the Padma Vibhushan[14] and Padma
Shri awards.[15] He is the father-in- law of Rishi Sunak, the British MP and Chief Secretary to the
Treasury.

Early life and education[edit]

Narayana Murthy was born on 20 August 1946 in Shidlaghatta, Chikkaballapura district[16] Karnataka.
After completing his school education, he went to the National Institute of Engineering and graduated in
1967 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. In 1969 he received his master's degree from the Indian
Institute of Technology Kanpur.[17][18]

Career[edit]
Murthy first served as Research Associate under a faculty at IIM Ahmedabad and then later served as
chief systems programmer[19]There he worked on India's first time-sharing computer system[18] and
designed and implemented a BASIC interpreter for Electronics Corporation of India Limited.[20] He
started a company named Softronics. When that company failed after about a year and a half, he
joined Patni Computer Systems in Pune.[21]
Murthy and six software professionals founded Infosys in 1981[22][23] with an initial capital injection of Rs
10,000, which was provided by his wife Sudha Murthy.[24] Murthy served as the CEO of Infosys for 21
years from 1981 to 2002[22] and was succeeded by co-founder Nandan Nilekani.[24] At Infosys he
articulated, designed and implemented the Global Delivery Model for IT services outsourcing from
India.[25] He was chairman of the board from 2002 to 2006, after which he became Chairman of the board
and Chief Mentor.[24][26] In August 2011, he retired from the company, taking the title chairman
Emeritus.[27][28]
Murthy serves as an independent director on the corporate board of HSBC and has served as a director on
the boards of DBS Bank, Unilever, ICICI and NDTV.[6][29] He also serves as a member of the advisory
boards and councils of several educational and philanthropic institutions,[6][29] including Cornell
University, INSEAD, ESSEC, Ford Foundation, the UN Foundation, the Indo-British Partnership, Asian
Institute of Management, a trustee of the Infosys Prize, a trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, and as a trustee of the Rhodes Trust.[30] He is also Chairman of the Governing board of Public
Health Foundation of India.[31] He serves on the Asia Pacific Advisory Board of British
Telecommunications.[29][32] In 2005 he co-chaired the World Economic Forum in Davos.[33]
On 1 June 2013, Murthy returned to Infosys as Executive chairman and Additional Director. On 12 June
2014 it was announced that Murthy would step down as Executive chairman effective 14 June. He would
continue as Non-Executive chairman until 10 October. On 11 October, Murthy was to be designated as
chairman Emeritus.[34]
Murthy also serves on the strategic board which advises the national law firm, Cyril Amarchand
Mangaldas, on strategic, policy and governance issues.[35] He is also member of IESE's International
Advisory Board (IAB)[36].
In 2016, Murthy spoke with Harvard Business Review Ascend[37] about "How To Be a Better Manager",
where he shared tips that he has learned from his real life. Here are some edited excerpts of his interview
on HBR Ascend.

Personal life[edit]
His wife, Sudha Murthy, is a social worker and author. She does philanthropic work through the Infosys
Foundation.[38]
Murthy has two children, a son Rohan Murty and a daughter Akshata Murthy. On 1 June 2013, Rohan
joined Infosys as an executive assistant to his father.[39] He left Infosys effective 14 June 2014.[34] Akshata
is married to Rishi Sunak, the Conservative MP for Richmond (Yorks) and Chief Secretary to the
Treasury.[40]

Awards and honours[edit]

The President, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil presenting the Padma Vibhushan to Shri N.R. Narayana
Murthy, at Rashtrapati Bhavan, in 2008

He was called to the one of the most inspirable program in Zee Kannada channel called "Weekend with
Ramesh" and honoured.

Year Name Awarding organization Ref.

[41]
2014 CIF Chanchlani Global Indian Award Canada India Foundation

[42][43][44]
2013 25 Greatest Global Indian Living Legends NDTV
Baroda Management Association, [45]
2013 Sayaji Ratna Award
Vadodara

[46]
2013 Philanthropist of the Year The Asian Awards

American Society of Mechanical [47]

2012 Hoover Medal
Engineers

[48]
2011 NDTV Indian of the Year's Icon of India NDTV

Institute of Electrical and Electronics [49]

2010 IEEE Honorary Membership
Engineers.

Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Woodrow Wilson International Center [50]
2009
Citizenship for Scholars

[51]
2008 Padma Vibhushan Government of India

[52]
2008 Officer of the Legion of Honor Government of France

Honorary Commander of the Order of the [53]

2007 Government of United Kingdom
British Empire (CBE)

IEEE Ernst Weber Engineering Leadership Institute of Electrical and Electronics [54]
2007
Recognition Engineers

Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of [55]
2003
Award the Year Jury

[15]
2000 Padma Shri Government of India
Mr. Murthy founded Infosys in 1981. Infosys is, today, a highly-innovative software services global
company listed on NYSE in the US and on the Bombay Stock Exchange in Mumbai.

Mr. Murthy conceptualized, articulated and implemented the Global Delivery Model (GDM) which has
become the backbone of the Indian software industry. GDM is based on collaborative distributed software
development principles and has resulted in the delivery of superior quality software to global customers
delivered on time and within budget. Mr. Murthy also introduced the concept of 24-hour work day to the
world.

Under Mr. Murthy’s leadership, Infosys became the leader in innovation in technical, managerial and
leadership training, software technology, quality, productivity, customer focus, employee satisfaction, and
physical and technological infrastructure.

In 2014, Mr. Murthy was ranked 13th among CNBC’s 25 global business leaders and listed among the
‘12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time’, by Fortune in 2012. He has received Legion d’honneur from
France, CBE from Britain and Padma Vibhushan from India. The Economist ranked him among the 10
most-admired global business leaders in 2005. Mr. Murthy is ranked among the top 10 of the Financial
Times’ list of “Business pioneers in technology”, published in March 2015. He is the first Indian winner
of Ernst and Young’s World Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Mr. Murthy was elected as a member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.
He is a foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Indian National
Academy of Engineering. He received the Founders Medal in 2018, the Hoover medal in 2012 and the
Ernst Weber Medal in 2007, all the three from IEEE. He has received Thomas Jefferson medal and James
C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award.

Currently, Mr. Murthy serves on the boards of Ford Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at
Princeton, New Jersey and the United Nations Foundation. He has served on the boards of HSBC and
Unilever, both headquartered in London.

He has served as a member of the boards of various well-known universities in the US like Cornell
University, Wharton School, the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and the Rhodes
Trust at Oxford. He was the Chairman of the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad), the #1
business school in India, and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI).

He is a member of the advisory board of the University of Tokyo (Japan), ESSEC Business School
(France), IESE Business School (Spain) and Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC – Brazil). He has also served
on the international advisory boards of Yale University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
William F. Achtmeyer Center for Global Leadership at the Tuck School of Business, Singapore
Management University INSEAD, Asian Institute of Technology (Bangkok), the Indian School of
Business (Hyderabad), and the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore.

He is also a Trustee of the Infosys Science Foundation, which governs the Infosys Prize, an annual award,
to honor outstanding achievements of researchers and scientists across six categories.
Infosys was conceived in 1981 in Pune by Narayan Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, N S Raghavan, S
Gopalakrishnan, S D Shibulal, K Dinesh and Ashok Arora, all former employees of Patni Computer
Systems.
The company was started with meager initial capital of Rs 10,000 and was named Infosys Consultants.
Murthy borrowed the sum from his wife Sudha Murthy. The front room of Murthy's home was the
company's first office, although the registered office was Raghavan's home.

Infosys's first employee

If you think it was Narayan Murthy, you are wrong. It was N S Raghavan. Murthy was employee No. 4,
he took nearly year to finish his tasks at Patni and then joined his firm.
Infosys did not have a computer till 1983, because Murthy could not afford to bring an imported option he
liked. It took almost two years to get a computer on their own. It was a Data General 32-bit MV8000.

Its first setback

KSA's collapse in 1989 pushed Infosys into a crisis. One of the founder-partners -- Ashok Arora(in pic) --
quit.
Others had no idea. That was when Murthy stepped in. 'If you all want to leave, you can. But I am going
to stick (with it) and make it,' Murthy told them. Nilekani, Gopalakrishnan, Shibulal, Dinesh and
Raghavan decided to stay and since then it's been always like that.

NASDAQ Listing

Infosys touched US$ 100 million in 1999. It also became the first IT company from India to be listed on
NASDAQ.
The share price of the firm surged to Rs 8,100 by 1999, making it the costliest share of the time.
At that time, Infosys was among the 20 biggest companies by market capitalization on NASDAQ.

Geographical presence
Infosys has 82 sales and marketing offices and 123 development centres across the world as of March 31,
2018, with major presence in India, United States, China, Australia, Japan, Middle East and Europe.[19][20]
In 2019, 60%, 24% and 3% of its revenues were derived from projects in North America, Europe and
India, respectively. Remaining 13% of revenues were derived from rest of the world.[21]
Infosys had a total of 228,123 employees at the end of March 2019
Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy, more popularly known as Narayana Murthy, is the co-founder of
Infosys, a multinational corporation that provides services pertaining to technology, engineering,
consulting and outsourcing.

Narayana Murthy was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth; in fact, he had to work extremely hard to
reach the top.He was born on August 20, 1946, in Mysore, Karnataka. He came from a poor but an
educated family.

From his childhood days, Narayana Murthy was academically brilliant. He was passionate about
Mathematics and Physics and always had the thirst and the desire to gain more knowledge in these fields.

Hence, he pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mysore and later,
received his Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Although Narayana Murthy was born into a poor family, his dreams were huge. From a young age, he
dreamt of starting his own business venture.

Narayana Murthy began his career as a chief systems programmer at IIM Ahmedabad. He then started a
company called Softronics, which failed after 1.5 years of its inception.

Despite the failures he encountered at an early age, he did not give up his dream of being an entrepreneur.
He learnt from his previous mistakes and decided to start afresh in 1981. That year, he, together with six
software professionals, put together Rs 10,000 to create a company called Infosys.

From the beginning, the team kept the interests of the company ahead of their own interest. And each of
the team members brought complementary strengths to the company.

Today, Narayana Murthy is listed as one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, alongside Steve Jobs
and Bill Gates. In 2000, he was awarded Padma Shri by the Government of India for his significant
contribution to the country’s IT sector and economy. In 2008, he was awarded Padma Vibhushan, India’s
second highest civilian award.

In 2011, when Narayana Murthy took retirement, the company went through tumultuous times. Cost-
cutting was evident and the performance of the company deteriorated.
On June 1, 2013, Narayana Murthy was called out of retirement to lead the company once again.
Narayana Murthy, who will turn 67 this year, has taken up the challenge to bring the company back on its
feet.

He has taken up the positions of an Additional Director and the Executive Chairman of the Board with the
company. And he is working closely with the top management to come up with incentives such as giving
higher salaries to top performers to improve the performance of the company.

This is a true example of commitment and dedication. Even after his retirement, Narayana Murthy is
willing to sacrifice his luxuries to revive the company.

Being born into a poor family did not deter Narayana Murthy from pursuing his dreams. This is what we
can learn from Narayana Murthy’s determination to succeed – anyone can rise in education and career if
he/she puts his mind and heart to it.

Lack of financial resources is not an excuse for a dull career. William Shakespeare once said, “It is not in
the stars to hold our destiny but in us.” Similarly, just because one is born into a poor family does not
mean that he/she will remain poor and unsuccessful for the rest of his/her life.

If we are passionate about changing our future, our dreams will definitely come true. Life is full of
challenges. We all make mistakes but it is important to learn from them and rise in our
academic and professional lives.