London: N R Narayana Murthy, who stepped down as Executive Chairman of Infosys last month, says he is keen to take up a professorship so that he could be with younger people.
"A professorship appeals very much because I enjoy being with younger people," 60-year-old Narayana Murthy said in an interview published in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday.
"Secondly, I come from a family of professors. I am the only black sheep of the family, so I think I will become a little bit more respectable if I become a professor," he added.
Like Bill Gates, whose mission was to bring computing to the masses, Murthy appears driven by social goals rather than a desire for riches, the daily said.
He developed his desire to set up a firm as he hitch-hiked his way back home from Paris to India in the late seventies. One of his less pleasant experiences on this epic 11-month trip crystalised his intentions.
Previously a staunch Leftist, a 72-hour spell in a Soviet prison was, he said, "The last nail in the coffin of socialism for me. I decided I would conduct an experiment in entrepreneurship and I embraced capitalism."
"I call myself a compassionate capitalist - I'm a capitalist in mind but a socialist at heart. For me entrepreneurship is the only instrument for countries like India to solve the problem of its poverty, creating more and more jobs with higher and higher disposable income."
"In Infosys, a few of us have made lots of money, but there is still another section that has not. I believe it is our responsibility to ensure that those who have not made that kind of money have an opportunity to do so."
PAGE_BREAK
Infosys uses the global delivery model to develop software for clients in the developed world. "This model takes a large task like developing software and splits it into two categories: those that require considerable interaction with the customer and those that have very low interaction with the customer," Murthy said.
"Activities like defining the problem, installation of software, training the customer, have necessarily to be delivered at the customer's side. On the other hand, activities like functional design, architecture and programming can be delivered from remote, scalable, talent-rich and cost competitive development centres, in countries such as India," he added.
It is, Murthy says, a win-win situation. "The customer gets much better prices. Similarly we get much better margins." Infosys recorded £345 million of operating profits on one billion pounds of revenues in the last fiscal.
However, making profits is not the driving force behind the firm, Murthy says. "When we sat down in my apartment in Mumbai to decide on the vision for the company, the seven of us had a discussion for about six hours."
"First we said, maybe we should become the largest company in revenues, then the most profitable etc, etc, but finally we came to a conclusion unanimously that we will seek respect from every stakeholder," added Murthy.
"As far as employees are concerned, we will create a fair, open environment where everything is discussed, deliberated and agreed upon and we will use data to come to conclusions. Because once you use data to come to conclusions people feel confident, people feel there is fairness in this organisation, people feel there is meritocracy, people feel there is no groupism," he said.
Comments
0 comment