The life and achievements of Mr. Narayan Murthy are fine examples to be followed. He has proved that hard work and intelligence put together, take one to any heights. It is said that all men are equal but Mr. Narayana Murthy has a different view. He says that each man is different from the other. Each person is talented in his own ways. What he needs are tapping his right potential.
Nagavara Rama Rao Narayana Murthy is the full name of Mr. Narayana Murthy. He was born on August 20, 1946 in Karnataka. His father was a teacher. After schooling in his native place, he took Engineering degree in Electrical Science from the University of Mysore in 1967, and then took degree in Master of Technology in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1969.
After this, he took up a job in SESA in Paris. He worked with a team to design a real time operating system for handling air cargo for Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. He proved his capability there as an intelligent engineer. He worked in SESA for three-and-a-half years. Then he decided to come back to India. He did not take a direct flight to India from Paris. He had only 450 dollars in his pocket and he hitchhiked his way to Mysore. He recalls that it was a great learning experience with many adventures.
After his return to India, he joined the Patni Computer Systems in Pune. There he met a lady engineer Ms. Sudha, who later became his wife. D.A. Prasanna, who is now the Managing Director and CEO of Wipro G.E. a computer concern, was his close friend there. Mr. Narayana Murthy started his company 'Infosys' with six others in 1981. The company did not fare well in the beginning and its annual turnover remained at Rs. 50 crores. His meticulous planning and able execution of the schemes made the company grow in leaps and bounds. Profits of the company started soaring and reached 293.52 million. The company's income, generated outside India rose from Rs. 50 to 90 crores.
Today, the net worth of Infosys is several billions. Apart from providing employment to thousands of engineers and others, Infosys earns considerable amount of valuable foreign exchange. Indeed, it was he who topped India to the World's IT map. Infosys is the biggest Information Technology Empire in India. Now Mr.Murthy is the Chairman of the Board and Chief Mentor officer of Infosys.
Infosys Technologies became the first India-registered company to be listed in the American Stock Exchange (NASDAQ: INFY). He has been the president of National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) from 1992-94. Mr. Narayana Murthy is a member of the National Information Technology Task Force of India. Now he is also a Director, Board of the Reserve Bank of India.
The awards bagged by him and the honours conferred on him are innumerable. In 2000-2001 he was awarded the Business Baron of the Year award. He was given the Max Schmidheiny Award in 2001. In June 2000 he was listed as one of the Asia's most powerful people in Asia Week power. In the Year 1999, he was named as one of the top entrepreneurs of the year in the Business Week. In the same year he was selected as the Businessman of the Year of 1999 by the Business India.
It is the Indian Corporate World's most coveted award. In 1996-97 he was awarded the JRD Tata Corporate leadership award. The Business Week chose him as one of the stars of Asia for three years i.e. 1998, 1999 and 2000. In 1998, he was conferred the distinguished 'Alumni Award' by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. At the international level also he is recognized as a great person. He is a member of the Asia Society's International Council and also a member of the Board of Councillors of the University Of Southern California School Of Engineering. Now he is a member of the Wharton Business School's Asian executive board.
His personal life is very inspiring, interesting and educative. The most important is simplicity. Mr. Narayana Murthy has brought up his two children in a very diligent way and they also have picked up the simplicity from their parents. It is worth to quote an incident to highlight the humanitarian nature of Mr. Murthy: One of the co-founders of Infosys, Dinesh, had gone to U.S.A. on business. In India his father suddenly became very ill and Dinesh was extremely worried about his father's health. Only phone calls were received and he felt that his physical presence would give solace to his father. When Mr. Murthy came to know about this, he immediately took a flight to U.S. and sent Dinesh back to India to be with his father.
