N R Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, believes that a founder of a company has the imprint of his soul on how deliberations take place in the company. Murthy was speaking at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave held in Bengaluru on Friday. He was in a conversation with his son Rohan Murty, who is also a founder of Soroco, a data-based software firm that helps convert data into meaningful information to help organizations address broken patterns of work across teams.
“The founder, at least till he or she retires, has the imprint of his soul on how deliberations take place in the company,” Murthy said.
Murthy shared that due to being a leftist at first and hailing from a lower-middle-class family of eight children, with a high school teacher as his father, he was taught that sharing is caring.
“As I pointed out earlier, my own experience in France, and in getting converted from a confused leftist to a determined compassionate capitalist. What do I mean by a compassionate capitalist? It means conservatism in economic matters but liberalism in social matters. So, I think the kind of company that you keep, the kind of trust you build in your people, and the kinds of sacrifices that I saw from my colleagues made me take certain decisions,” he shared.
Murthy recalled that during the time of annual report preparation, his employees would be in the office until 4 am for five to six days, and he would go character by character through it.
“I would go home by car, but there were people who didn’t have a car, so they would have to arrange a rickshaw. My view was that the best way of deriving happiness and joy is to share whatever little fruit is coming out of this exercise with as many people as possible. That is why we distributed as much as $20 billion among our people,” he noted.
The senior leader said that the whole Infosys was run on that principle, for the interests of the community.
Murthy also talked about how, as a founder, one has to walk the talk and show the behavior that you want your employees to exhibit.
“I would be there in the office at six. So at that time, people realized it, and people would always come on time. Your actions speak louder than your words,” he added.
When asked whether he believes in destiny or luck, Murthy said that he’s a firm believer in God and relies heavily on faith.
“I am a very traditional person. I believe in God. I have derived a lot of value from faith because I have been in a lot of situations where I could use logic, and I’m not bad at using logic. But despite fate, I couldn’t find an answer in logic. And that’s when I refer to prayer, and that has given me a lot of strength. As I think it was either Emile Zola or Louis Pasteur who said, ‘When God is shy to announce his presence, he comes in the form of chance; therefore, luck is extremely important,'” he pointed out.
Murthy said that there were so many of his classmates whom he believed were smarter than him, but they didn’t have the luck to be where he was.
“So I think luck is very important, and also, once you believe in luck, it also brings a little bit of humility in you,” he added.