BW Communities

Life After Infosys

BW Online Bureau Nov 08, 2014

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[Unlike the Infosys headquarters, which is a well manicured 80-acre campus, with elegant glass and chrome structures, the new office address is in Jayanagar, a quiet up-market part of Bangalore, barely 2 kilometers from his residence. The building, named Tatagatha, is a large, squarish, two-floor structure and houses N R Narayana Murthy's investment fund Catamaran. The building was named Tatagatha because it was one of the names of Gautam Buddha, and can be loosely translated to mean ‘somebody who is beyond transitory phenomena'. Saturday, August 20, is his 66th birthday. For the last time in an executive capacity at least, Nagawara Ramarao Narayana Murthy is wearing a light blue shirt with the Infosys name emblazoned on it. There is a gaggle of reporters, television, print and web, who are waiting for their ‘exclusive' meetings  -- in reality 5-15 minutes face time, with mostly same questions framed in different ways -- with the man who did so much to put Indian IT on the global map. Boradcast vans of several channels are haphazardly parked on the quiet street. Journalists, camera men, editors, all wait downstairs and are shepherded, one at a time, for an audience with the man himself in the board room upstairs. When he meets BW, he confesses, that over the last week, as media interest in him has peaked (to coincide with his hanging up his boots, after steering Infosys over 3 decades), he has been in endless, rounds of meetings. Apart from media he has also been in various parties, events and get-togethers organised by his co-founders, friends, employees, investors and customers. Little wonder he looks tired and can't stop yawning. Son Rohan walks in to greet his father. A chip of the old block, no grandiose gestures here, just a perfunctory wish, equally accepted with a smile and a nod. There are guests waiting at home for today's special birthday lunch (mainly family members and a few friends I am later told). So Murthy is in a hurry to depart and promises BW that we will meet again later in the week for a more detailed chat. And anyway he has got scores of other media interactions waiting for him once he is back from his birthday lunch. Pandu, who is Murthy's majordomo for more than a decade and a half and who is the unobtrusive shadow, notes down the promise, so that it could be acted on. Infosys and its much-storied founders have always punched above their weight, because they essentially captured the zeitgeist of the Indian transformative journey post the 1991 economic reforms. A growing middle class with a high aspirational quotient, could readily identify with a company, whose success did not owe anything to the government, competed with the best across the globe and more importantly won, even as it shared wealth among its employees and shareholders, while setting benchmarks for corporate governance and disclosure norms. The fact that the promoters were first generation middle class entrepreneurs with no major industrial house backing them lent only additional sheen to their story. They were ‘people like us.' While the collective effort of the founders helped propel the company, its soul has always been Narayana Murthy or Murthy as he is internally called. He has been the driving force behind the company. Holding it together during times of crisis (when the IPO almost devolved, the decision to let go off GE as a client, steering the company post the dotcom crash) or making judgement calls in the larger interest of the company (letting go of his protégé Phaneesh Murthy due to a scandal, promoting Nandan ahead of Kris, or even earlier offering to buyout others if they wanted to exit), Murthy's extraordinary vision, tenacity, hard work has helped Infosys to become India's second largest IT services exporter with a market cap in excess of $27 billion. Murthy's calendar prepared months in advance usually features him being more than 200 days on the road, in a year. His wife, Sudha who in her own way has contributed extraordinarily to the success of her husband and the company he founded, once confessed to this writer that for a seven year period, even after he stepped down from the CEO and MD role, they could not go on a family holiday as the schedules never matched. With Murthy still being on the board of directors of several companies as well as international organizations, his travel while seeing some minor change, is unlikely to come down drastically, though he did say he would like to spend more time with his grandchildren (now that daughter Akshata has given a him a granddaughter in ‘Krishna'). Even his wish to teach the next generation (like his school master father) might be difficult given the demands on his time. There are already clamours from various admirers, for him to don a bigger role in public life (a la one of his co-founders Nandan Nilekani the UIDAI chairman), including mentions of either an ambassadorship to the US or the President's office. Great institutions are beyond even admittedly great individuals. Murthy has in the past asserted that true test of a leader is in the caliber of successors he is able to groom. Infosys retains strong growth and is a phenomenal profit engine, but is facing challenges on several fronts as the global technology industry morphs again. Even as the company and the leadership he groomed, grapples with the challenges, it would be in their interest to listen to the Chairman Emeritus who says he will still ‘provide' advice and guidance ‘if sought.' We are watching and listening.