Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys, expressed regret about excluding his wife Sudha Murty from the company despite her being “more qualified” than the seven first employees of what is now one of India’s largest IT companies.
Calling it in retrospect the “wrongly idealistic” choice, Murthy told CNBC-TV18 he then thought it best to keep all family out of business.
Notably, Sudha Murty had contributed ₹10,000 to the seed capital for Infosys, along with the first seven which included Ashok Arora, K Dinesh, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Nandan Nilekani, NS Raghavan, and SD Shibulal alongside her husband Narayana Murthy, as per a Hindustan Times report.
Murthy also credited his wife for advising him to focus on the export market, telling the channel that Murty was “more qualified than all seven of us”.
Murthy’s Ideals
“I had this feeling that good corporate governance means not bringing family into it. Because those days, it was the only family rule, all kinds of children used to come and run the company, there used to be a violation of all laws,” Murthy told CNBC-TV18.
“I openly said I was wrong. Now, I don’t believe this. I think what I was doing those days was wrong, I was wrongly idealistic and, in some way, I think I was influenced a lot by the environment of those days,” he added.
When asked whether son Rohan Murty would join Infosys at any point, Murthy was firm that there is no possibility. “I think he’s even stricter than I am in these ideas. He will never say that. Never… never…” he said. Rohan is the founder and CTO at AI tech company Soroco. Murthy’s daughter Akshata, who is married to UK PM Rishi Sunak holds a 0.93 percent stake in Infosys.
When asked about his decision to pull away from Infosys, the 77-year-old called himself “just a shareholder”
“I am just a shareholder, in fairness. I have not been consulted on any issue in Infosys in the last… since August 4 or 5, 2017, when Nandan Nilekani took over. Not once. It’s the right thing. I mean, he’s doing things the way we all did. So, apart from being the largest family shareholders of Infosys, we have nothing else to do with Infosys. That’s a reality,” he added.
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Published: 05 Jan 2024, 11:15 AM IST