‘Infosys was just a one-room office’: Co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan on initial difficulties

Infosys, a reputable IT company in India, was founded in 1981 by seven young engineers: NR Narayana Murthy, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Nandan Nilekani, SD Shibulal, K Dinesh, Ashok Arora, and NS Raghavan.   The founders initially shared apartments and offices, which led to the development of lifelong friendships.   In an interview with Moneycontrol, Kris Gopalakrishnan revealed that Infosys' office in Bengaluru's Jayanagar had only one private cabin.   "Whoever comes first or whoever has customer meetings gets that office and the rest of us would kind of hang around outside because we didn't have space to sit," he said. "So, these are the experiences that made Infosys what it is today."   Gopalakrishnan and his colleagues lived hand-to-mouth for the first ten years of Infosys. He claimed that invoices determined whether or not they would get paid.   "We were lucky that some of the customers were willing to pay us in advance," Gopalakrishnan said. "We would raise the invoice on the first and before the 15th, we would get paid. So that the next month salaries could be paid."   These early difficulties brought the group even closer together.   "We became friends, our families became friends with each other," the Infosys co-founder said. "And that friendship happened because of these experiences, right? We have all shared apartments, cooked food together. All kinds of sharing, sharing office spaces."   Earlier this year, Gopalakrishnan published his most recent book. It explores the effects of the IT industry and the well-known figures who contributed to its development and is titled Against All Odds: The IT story of India. This month, Infosys celebrated its forty-year journey.