Infosys at 25

Desi Fun(da) ... and more.

This week India's darling IT company turned a solid 25 years old. It is suprising to know that it has been nearly 25 years since Narayan Murthy and his cohorts dreamt up everything about software offshoring that is so commonly talked about all around the place. Well they did celebrate their birthday with a bang offering shareholders a 1:1 bonus and a Rs.30 dividend bonus/share to commemorate their 25 years. Pretty cool wish I had bought some of their shares on Thursday.

Well to party along the news channels went overboard on getting the Infosys board members on their talk shows and stuff. But CNBC went all the way by having multiple shows throughout the day specifically on Infosys. And the icing on the cake was an exclusive interview with the entire board of the company and then singularly with Narayan Murthy.

Among all the things that he spoke about he went out of his to repetitively state that Infosys has tried to be model citizens of the Indian corporate world. It has relied only on facts and figures and based its estimates on hard data and nothing more. Thereby following the dictum that when in doubt, disclose. He also stated that the focus of the company is its customers, followed by its employees and finally its shareholders. (Something very similar to the Tata ideology) And hey there is also some similarity with my thoughts. He clearly stated that the focus of any successful company should be "Underpromise and Overdeliver". (If you have read my previous post on suggestions for a startup you know I am not lying)

All in all it was a great interview and it was wonderful to see the picture of Mr. JRD Tata in the background while the interview with Mrs.Murthy was on. It seems the legacy of Mr. Tata lives on, in the daily work of people like Mr. and Mrs. Murthy. We need more of such people.