Narayana Murthy

Narayana Murthyis an Indian software entrepreneur who cofounded Infosys Technologies Ltd., the first Indian company to be listed on an American stock exchange.

Murthy earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Mysore in 1967 and a master’s degree in technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1969. During the 1970s he worked in Paris, where, among other projects, he helped design an operating system for handling air cargo at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Returning to India, he accepted a position with a computer systems company in Pune, but eventually he decided to launch his own company. He cofounded Infosys with six fellow computer professionals in 1981.

The company grew slowly until the early 1990s, when the Indian government’s decisive move toward economic liberalization and deregulation contributed to dramatic growth in the country’s high-technology and computer sectors. Murthy aggressively expanded his company’s services and client base, negotiating deals with many overseas businesses to provide them with consulting, systems integration, software development, and product engineering services. By 1999 Infosys had joined Nasdaq, becoming the first Indian company to be listed on an American stock exchange. The following year Asiaweek included Murthy in its Power 50, the magazine’s annual list of the most powerful people in the region. In addition, BusinessWeek named him one of its “Stars of Asia” for three consecutive years (1998–2000), and he was Fortune magazine’s 2003 Asian Businessman of the Year.

In April 2004 Murthy announced that the Bangalore-based Infosys had posted $1.06 billion in total annual revenue—an astonishing 33 percent increase in revenue over the previous fiscal year. The company’s growth was all the more remarkable because it came in the midst of a global downturn in the information technology industry. Such phenomenal success was not without controversy, however. A political debate erupted in the United States over job losses caused by offshoring, the outsourcing of work overseas. This was of serious concern to Infosys, which derived more than two-thirds of its revenue from American corporations. Murthy responded that it was “normal” that concerns over job losses would be voiced, and while he indicated that he thought outsourcing was “here to stay,” he made efforts to assuage some of the anger by announcing that Infosys would establish a consulting unit in the United States that would employ 500 workers. In the end the controversy appeared not to have significantly dented Infosys’s business. When Murthy retired in 2006, he left behind a company with some 70,000 employees and $3 billion a year in revenue. He was awarded the Legion of Honour in 2008.