Shri Narayana Murthy at IIM Indore

Shri N R Narayana Murthy, Co-Founder, Chairman and the Chief Mentor at Infosys Technologies Ltd visited the Indian Institute of Management, Indore on February 23, 2009 as the first speaker of the “Distinguished Leadership Series”. He addressed the IIM I academic community. After a warm welcome, Dr. N Ravichandran, Director, IIM Indore requested Mr. Murthy to speak about “The joy of creating Infosys”.
	Mr Murthy spoke about how the seeds of Infosys were sown because he believed that creating employment opportunity was the only way to solve the problem of poverty in India. The vision that he had when he started Infosys was “To be the most respected company in India”. This he believed would lead to the highest standards of corporate governance, fairness, transparency and accountability and that financial results will follow. The Infosys journey in an unfriendly business environment was a difficult one. Mr Murthy explained how they started working with some simple principles - spend less than what you earn, dividends from day one and re-investing earnings,
choosing one leader who will sacrifice the most and look out for the others and deciding every issue based on data and facts. Mr. Murthy also explained that family had no role to play in the business and this belief has always been upheld. The address was followed by an interaction with the participants. A range of issues related to his experience in creating Infosys were discussed.
Mr. Murthy pointed out that the purpose of creating Infosys was to leverage entrepreneurship to create jobs, to show that a legal and ethical business in India is possible and to confirm his belief in democratization of wealth. On entrepreneurship and recruiting for Infosys, he spoke about focusing on ‘learnability’ as a key factor. He believes in recruiting people who are smart and have a similar value system. On the state of Indian IT Industry, Mr. Murthy said that even though it has done exceptionally well, the synchronised downturn is bound to sap the enthusiasm. His view was that the situation should turn around in about 18-36 months.
“It was a pleasure to interact with a person who I hold in such high regard. His belief in his value system and the foundation on which Infosys is built, make me proud of having been a part of it. “ - Prerna Raman, PGP Student, IIM Indore. “An awe inspiring speaker, his talk showed us what a man is capable of achieving if his principles are sound and his mind is sharp. A truly exhilarating experience” - Pratik Mittal, PGP Student, IIM Indore. “Its heartening to see a man remain true to his values and succeed as a business man” - Amit Prasad, PGP Student, IIM Indore He concluded the interaction by saying that India has no lack of talent and that the measure of one's value system is the price that one is willing to incur in an attempt to stick to that.