PERSONALITY SPECIAL....................MAKING OF A LEGEND

MAKING OF A LEGEND   Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy reflects on the influences, events and people who made him what he is At the age of 27, NR Narayana Murthy took off on a year-long backpacking trip  across Europe. He had just finished a three year stint with an information  technology (IT) company in Paris, working on a project for the French government, and he wanted to see a bit of the world before returning to India.  “I knew I would I never be able to do it if I didn't do it then,“ he recalls. “Many of the people I met in France had done such trips. But I had to plan it  more carefully since I needed a visa for every country I travelled to, as an Indian.“ Murthy had saved around 5,000 French Francs from the stipend he received in Paris, enough to ensure a comfortable trip around the continent, but he wanted  to get into the spirit of things and travel on a budget, like a fresh college graduate:  “I gave away 4,500 francs to Freres de Tiers Mondes, an organisation that helped projects in third world countries, and ects in third world countries, and kept the rest for the trip. Most of the time, I hitchhiked. I was trav elling alone, but I met some very interesting people on the way.“ This was the early 70s and there were certainly a lot of interest ing people on the  road in Europe. As a teenager in the 60s, Murthy had grown up on The Beatles, Mahesh Yogi and Woodstock, but now The Who, Queen and Pink Floyd ruled. Travelling through Italy, Germany, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Turkey, staying in  dormitories, Murthy was witness to the sex and drugs culture that was part of the backpacking scene. “There were gays, lesbians, couples. But I didn't experiment with drugs or sex  on that trip myself. I wanted some fun out of life, but I wasn't crazy. I was 27  already, not a teenager,“ says Murthy. Be that as it may, the road trip certainly brings out the hallmarks of the founder of Infosys Technologies.The first is courage, for few Indians even today would  be prepared to plan a year long trip on 500 francs. The second is his liberal,  very global mind set, which played no small role in the success of Infosys. The third is his indifference to money and the comforts it can buy. Lounging with his legs up on the table in the little conference room of Catamaran  Ventures, which itself is located in a modest bungalow in Bangalore's Jayanagar,  Murthy, 71, explains it in terms that present day start-up entrepreneurs chasing high valuations can relate to: “I gave Nandan, Kris and Raghavan a 15% stake each in Infosys, though they had only two years of experience then and were  some eight levels below me. I gave Shibu, Dinesh and Ashok another 10% each.  Money has never been important to me.“ Leftist Leanings This mind-set has much to do with Murthy's upbringing in Mysore in the 50s and 60s. Mysore is a middle class town, where education and culture are of the essence.Murthy's father, a high school teacher who retired as District Education  Officer, liked to listen to Western clas sical music while he listened to The Beatles.  “My father was a staunch Nehruvian and I was strongly leftist,“ says Murthy. “At the dining table, he would talk optimisti cally about the progress the country was making under Nehru. The quality of politicians and bureaucrats was very high. The IITs and Institute of Medical Science were being built. We were all anti-US and pro-USSR because Russia had built a steel plant in India, while America had refused to help.“ Disenchantment with Nehru's leadership eventu ally set in, when the then Prime Minister ignored complaints of corruption in Pratap Singh Kairon's government in Punjab and then the Mundhra scandal, which led to the  resignation of then Finance Minister TT Krishnamachari. “It was a violation of values, though it is nothing like what we see today. Those days you didn't  have so many violations of values, so it was a big thing,“ says Murthy. Still, Murthy held on to his leftist ideology till fairly late in life and it played  a part in the decision to return to India after his France project in 1975, though there were ample opportunities in Europe for people with his skills . After graduating in 1967 with a degree in electrical engi neering from National Institute of Engineering, Mysore, Murthy had briefly joined the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore to do his masters but quit in a month (“the professors would just come in and dictate notes“) to join IIT-Kanpur, where did finish his  masters, in 1969. “There were a lot of job opportunities for engineers then,“  recalls Murthy.“We were a batch of ten post-graduates from IIT-K and the  going salary was Rs 1500 a month. But I joined IIMAhmedabad as chief officer at a salary of Rs 800. They were installing the first time-sharing system -a Hewlett Packard computer with 16 tele-printers interacting with a central  processing unit using Basic programming language -and I found the work very interesting.“ It was at IIM-A that Murthy really came into his own, applying his intellect to solving real world problems using the latest in computer systems.These were  also the best of times for the new B-school, with Vikram Sarabhai as its first chairman and Ravi Mathai as its first director. As the head of the institute's computer centre, Murthy did some original work, which he presented at academic conferences. It was one such paper, presented at a conference in Italy,  which bagged him the assignment in Paris. Failed Entrepreneur Returning to India, via Kabul, after his hitchhiking trip, Murthy joined a former colleague from IIMA who was in charge of a think tank in Pune. The job paid  Rs 900 a month and involved using operations re search techniques to solve problems for public sector enterprises. But the trip around Europe had changed Murthy's thinking and he was less of a leftist than he was. He now wanted to be an entrepreneur, with a company that would work with private sector companies as his clients. “I came to realise the only way to solve the country's problems was  by creating jobs. What was required is equality of opportunity which is part of the capitalist model, not equality of outcomes, which was the communist ideal,“ he says. Murthy's first venture, a consulting firm called Softronics, didn't last very long. Indian companies, it turned out, were not yet ready for the heavy duty computer  algorithms he had to offer. Murthy then took up his first corporate job at Patni Computers, where he stayed for five years, learning the ropes of software development business, this time with global companies as clients. Being a failed  entrepreneur didn't carry any weight those days and his starting salary at Patni was only Rs 1,000 a month. But at that point, Murthy didn't care. The Patni experience would prove invaluable in starting Infosys. “Ashok Patni, an IIT-Bombay graduate, was a fine boss. He had created a great incentive system based on performance and my salary increased quite rapidly,“ he says. Smelling the Roses Pune was where Murthy met his to-be wife Sudha, then an engineer at Tata Motors, who was introduced to him by a friend from his IIM-A days. Was it love at first sight? “The relationship developed over a three year period,“ says Murthy. “Every evening we would meet and go for long walks in Deccan  Gymkhana.We had a favourite Chinese restaurant called Chun Fong and there  was this place called Dakshin which served great fruit juices. Then I'd see her  back to her hostel by 9 pm, and return to Kamla Niwas Lodge, where I was  staying. I had a great group of friends there and we would stay awake till 2 am.  talking about every thing, over numerous cups of tea.“ How did he find time to socialise so much? “I was dealing with the government of India those days, so the pressure of work was not much,“ says Murthy. “Now the environment has become competitive and people may not have the time.  But if the environment doesn't make that kind of demand on you, I think you  would make time to be with friends, talk, socialise. People in government and academics still have that lifestyle.“ Winding Down Murthy himself is cultivating a more relaxed lifestyle these days. The Catamaran  Ventures office is very close to his home, and he's there from 9 am till noon,  after which he returns home for an afternoon siesta. Most of his time now is spent on work related to the various institutions he's on the Boards of (including  the Ford Foundation, UN Foundation and the Public Health Foundation of India). He reads more, as is evident from the book-lined walls of his office and Catamaran's reception area (where there's a large volume on The Beatles). What does he think of today's young start-up entrepreneurs? Is there more innovation today than before? “I'm a fan of young entrepreneurs,“ says Murthy  “They're walking an untrodden path, bringing new ideas to the market. Every time new entrepreneurs emerge, the frontiers are extended. We extended the  frontiers with our innovations, today's young entrepreneurs are extending it further.“ Starting as a tech entrepreneur, Murthy has built a global organisation and emerged a leader not just of his own company but of India Inc.How did he do it?  “I sought respect,“ he says. “I said, right from the beginning, that we will seek  respect from all our stakeholders. That was the foundation of everything.“ What are the management ideas that influenced him on the journey? “More than management ideas, I've set store in values: fairness, accountability, transparency. The rest then falls into pace. Take the issue of diversity, which is  an important organisation issue today. I have practiced it since the 90s, when four of my direct reports were women ­ the head of quality, marketing, human resources and information systems.Fairness says you have to provide equal opportunity. Diversity flourishes in such an environment,“ says Murthy. By Dibeyendu Ganguly CDET4SEP15