Nandan Nilekani

After seeing the success of startups like Whatsapp, SlideShare, Uber, Snapdeal, the thirst of becoming entrepreneur among today’s youth is increasing at a rapid pace. However, after two or three failed attempts, most of them step back in despair. One thing everyone should keep in mind that nobody or no venture becomes successful without tasting failures. Setting a high aim is perfectly fine but one should also be prepared for the challenges that will come on the way. Worldwide acclaimed and India’s top software company, Infosys too has tasted failures before it became software giant. The huge empire we see today also started from a speck of dust. The only thing that made this company a huge success is firm determination of Narayana Murthy, one of the founders of the company.

The Foundation
The fire to get success in entrepreneurial world was ignited in Narayana Murthy in the early 70’s, when he founded his first venture, Softronics. But unfortunately, the company couldn’t stand the demands of the business world and Murthy had to shut it down. Murthy went back to job and joined Patni Computer Systems as General Manager. However, the urge to go back to entrepreneurship didn’t let him settle down in job. The wait for the right time was finally over when on one morning of January 1981, he sat with his six software engineer friends, N S Raghavan, S Gopalakrishnan, Nandan Nilekani, S D Shibulal, K Dinesh and Ashok Arora to talk about opening a company to develop software.

The spark and passion to establish the company was then brimmed in all of them but the biggest hurdle was funds required for setting up a company. None of them had the required capital to invest in the business. This is when Sudha, Narayana Murthy’s wife helped them with $250 (Rs.10,000), her savings of three years, to lay the foundation of the company. The first milestone was crossed after 6 months and  they registered their company on 2^nd July 1981 as Infosys Consultants Private Limited.

Burning mid night oil
Although they had registered N S Raghavan’s house in Dadar, Mumbai as the company’s office but there was no company office as such. But in 1982, when Murthy and his wife moved to Pune and bought a small house there, the front room of the house was then used as the office of the company.

In 1983 Infosys got its first client, Data Basics Corporation, a U.S based company. They had to move their company to Bangalore to make the dealings with their client easier. Murthy alone moved to Bangalore to manage the company. The environment around was not at all business friendly and this is why Murthy and the other company founders had to face difficulties at every step. Due to insufficiency of money, he could not make a separate office for the company and worked from home. As time passed, the whole team shifted to Bangalore and devoted themselves to the work. The financial status of the company didn’t allow them to recruit employees and thus all the founders along with Murthy’s wife toiled themselves day and night to write codes.

On the verge of breakdown
Around three years later, the company moved into a joint venture with Kurt Salmon Associates. But the venture couldn’t last long and collapsed in 1989. This dissolution of the joint venture gave them a big jolt. The little bit of hope left to take to company few steps ahead was also gone. Even after 8 years, they found themselves stagnated at the same place without any success while their class fellows were all leading a luxurious life. This failure got them into a situation of crisis as the company was about to collapse. Seeing the present condition, one of the founders, Ashok Arora decided to sell his shares and quit as he could not see any hope left in this company.

A new beginning
While other partners were left bewildered from this failure, Narayana Murthy stood firm in his determination and decided to continue trying. The others too got inspired from his optimism and soon they returned to work with the same passion and vigor as they started eight years ago. This time they made up some plans and strategies to move ahead. They divided the work among themselves where Murthy took the responsibility of a manager, Nilekani handled sales department, Krishnan and Shibulal overtook the technical end, Rhaghavan was given the responsibility to deal with people and Dinesh looked in the matters of quality.

With their dedicated efforts, talent and efficiency the company began gaining the momentum. The light of success was visible now as their hard work started paying off. The company began expanding with more employees and offices. In no time they established their first international office in Boston city of U.S.

Infosys established itself as an top software company in India by mid of 90’s. Narayana Murthy now looked forward to build up a good image of the company in the country as well as overseas. He began investing in building huge campuses to seep deeper into the global market. But the stupor of success could not infect him as he always followed the principles he made for his business. For him ethics in business were more important than gaining profit and this is the reason that took his company to become India’s second biggest software company.

By 1995, Infosys opened global development centers including an office in U.K. In the year 1999, the company with a worth of $100 million got listed in NASDAQ. Though there was some troubling time in 2012-13 which forced Narayan Murti to come back to Infosys. Now under Vishal Sikka’s leadership Infosys is again on growth path. Today, Infosys has offices in various countries and its present worth is around $11 billion.