Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy tells young founders to learn from their mistakes and change path if needed

A lot has been written about India's digital transformation in the last few days and startups in the country are increasing at a rapid pace. As per a TOI report, India's internet economy will reach USD 1 trillion by 2030 and the growth will be driven by startups and MSMEs, according to Bain and Company executive Parijat Ghosh. While startups continue to expand in the country, Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy has a piece of advice for all the young founders out there.

NR Narayana Murthy's advice to young founders

Speaking at the Business Today Tech Today Congress, the Infosys founder said that young startup founders are 'highly impressionable' and are 'prone to committing mistakes'. However, as long as they learn from these mistakes and change their path accordingly, they should be fine.

Talking about the young startup founders, he said, "These are all youngsters and they are highly impressionable. And, therefore, prone to committing mistakes. We should not be extremely harsh on them. But as long as they are willing to learn from their mistakes, quickly change their path and move towards what is in the interest of every stakeholder they should be fine."

Murthy continued to elaborate on his statement and added, "as long as possible, they need to tell all of their stakeholders that see, some of you have lost some money. Therefore, what we will do is we will run the corporation very well, we will create a certain kitty and we will do good social service. And second, for those of you who have a part of your stocks in the company, we will work 10 times hard and make sure that money will grow and compensate for whatever losses we have made."

NR Narayana Murthy on ChatGPT

These days, discussion about ChatGPT and other AI tools is dominating the tech market. OpenAI introduced ChatGPT in November 2022 and the AI chatbot proved to be revolutionary. Eventually, OpenAI released GPT-4, a superior version of ChatGPT with enhanced powers and greater capabilities. With all its power and capabilities, ChatGPT also became a cause of concern for some people who argued that the AI bot might cost people their jobs in the future.

NR Narayana Murthy also expressed his thoughts on the on-going debate in an interview with CNBC in April this year. Murthy said that 'Nothing can beat the human mind', while referring to AI chatbots like ChatGPT.

"I am a great believer in the theory that the human mind is the most powerful imagination, machine. There is nothing that can beat the human mind," he had said and added that it is the human mind that differentiates one from another. Hence, even though we all have access to the same ChatGPT, we will be using it differently.

"If there is a competition between you and me, you will use the ChatGPT output as your base, and then you will add your own differentiation, your own smartness, your own tweaking," said Murthy and added, "And that's when the teachers will be much more impressed with you than with me. The lazy guys will get C. Only smart people will get A. Therefore, I am not so much worried about ChatGPT," he said.