Could not reward early Infosys employees properly, regret it: Narayana Murthy

Narayana Murthy- Sudha Murty: Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty are seen.

NR Narayana Murthy says he ‘regrets’ not being able to reward many of Infosys’ early employees as much as he did the company’s co-founders.

“There were several extremely smart early adopters of Infosys whom I could not award the kind of stock I gave to my co-founders. Their contribution was more or as much as mine,” Murthy said answering questions following his book launch.

The veteran engineer, now a billionaire, added that he should have thought about it (awarding early employees) ‘very carefully.’

“Those extraordinary people too would have benefitted,” the business leader, 77, said.

Infosys, which was founded in July 1981 in Pune but is now headquartered in Bengaluru, has seven co-founders, who were all engineers. Besides Murthy, they are Nandan Nilekani, Kris Gopalakrishnan, SD Shibulal, K Dinesh, NS Raghavan, and Ashok Arora.

Last month too, Murthy had expressed a ‘regret’ – that he did not allow his wife, Sudha Murty, to join the company, now a tech giant. Infosys was set up with a seed capital of ₹10,000 given by Sudha Murty to her spouse.

Also Read | ‘I was wrongly idealistic’: Narayana Murthy regrets not letting wife Sudha Murty join Infosys

‘Everyone’s views were considered’

He further noted that during his time at the IT major, everyone’s views were considered before any decision was made.

Murthy, however, also remarked that in a democracy, ‘you don’t always get the best results.’

“Infosys would have done much better than what we did because we had created an enlightened democracy,” he stated.

Murthy also praised former prime ministers PV Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh; ex-finance minister P Chidambaran, and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, former deputy chairperson of the now-scrapped Planning Commission for ‘ushering in liberalisation and enabling the tech revolution.’

On Friday, prime minister Narendra Modi announced Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian honour, for Narasimha Rao.

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