Produced by: Bhoomika Aggarwal Designed by: Mohsin Shaikh
NR Narayana Murthy has stirred a debate on a healthy work-life balance after his statement that youngsters must work for 70 hours-a-week garnered mixed responses, with many criticising him for promoting unhealthy work culture while a number of India Inc. leaders coming out in his support
His wife Sudha Murty and Founder of Infosys Foundation came out in his support saying, "He has worked 80 to 90 hours a week, so, he doesn’t know what less than that is. He believes in real hard work and he lived like that. Hence, he has told what he felt."
Let's take a deep dive into the life of Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy who worked tirelessly to build Infosys, one of the leading IT companies not just in India but in the entire world
Born and raised in Shidlaghatta, Karnataka, Narayana Murthy, who was always fascinated by technology, pursued Btech in Electrical Engineering from National Institute of Engineering. Later, he did his Masters from IIT Kanpur
He started working at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad as chief systems programmer, and then at a private firm named Patni Computer Systems
While doing his IT job, Narayana Murthy met Nandan Nilekani, S.D. Shibulal, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Ashok Arora, K. Dinesh and N.S. Raghavan. Together they started working towards creating their own IT company, which became Infosys
Narayana Murthy was the CEO of Infosys for 21 years from 1981 to 2002. He was the brain behind the pioneering global delivery model to help the foreign companies outsource their IT professionals from India, thus paving the path for India to build one of the leading IT industries in the world
As per Forbes, Narayana Murthy is currently 646th richest person in the world with a net worth of $4.2 billion. In spite of their massive wealth, he and Sudha Murty are known and revered for their simplicity and grounded values
Murthy is currently an independent director on the corporate board of HSBC and has been a director on the boards of DBS Bank, Unilever, ICICI and NDTV. He has been honoured with Padma Vibhushan for his immense contribution to the IT sector. He is known to be a great mentor and has written a few books such as The Wit and Wisdom of Narayana Murthy, Mere Business Mantra and A Better India A Better World