When Wipro Refused Narayana Murthy A Job… And Infosys Was Born

Bengaluru: Infosys is one of India’s biggest success stories in IT sector.

However, Infosys may not have happened had Wipro not refused a job to Narayana Murthy.

Former Wipro chairman Azim Premji once admitted to Murthy that not hiring him was one of his biggest mistakes.

“Azim once told me that one of the biggest mistakes he committed was not to hire me. If things had turned out differently, there would have been no competition for Wipro,” Murthy told CNBC TV18.

Wipro and Infosys, both based in Bengaluru, are two of India’s largest IT companies.

While Wipro was founded by Azim’s father MH Hasham Premji, in December 1945, Infosys was launched in July 1981 by Murthy and six fellow engineers – Nandan Nilekani, Kris Gopalakrishnan, SD Shibulal, K Dinesh, NS Raghavan and Ashok Arora.

Murthy, now 77, used a seed capital of Rs 10,000 — provided by his wife Sudha Murty – to set up Infosys.

The billionaire businessman admitted in the interview that he was “wrongly idealistic” in not allowing Sudha to work for the company, and that she was “more qualified than all seven of us.”

Murthy’s first entrepreneurial venture was Softronics, which failed. He then joined Patni Computer Systems in Pune. Infosys was born after that.