N. R. Narayana Murthy

Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy, known as N. R. Narayana Murthy, is an Indian industrialist, software engineer and one of the seven founders of Infosys Technologies, a global consulting and IT services company based in India. He is currently the non-executive Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys. He was the CEO of the company for 21 years, from 1981 to 2002. After stepping down as CEO in 2002, he has broadened his scope of activities to social services as well as promoting India globally.
Murthy's corporate and social vision has been appreciated globally and he is the recipient of several awards including Padma Vibushan - India's second highest civilian award.

N R Narayana Murthy, 53, has a resume befitting a man who founded what 'Asia Money' called 1998's Best Managed Indian Company and one of a handful of the best managed companies in the Asia-pacific region. Graduating as a Bachelor of Technology from the University of Mysore in 1967, he completed a Masters in Technology, Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1969.
His career began as a modestly paid Chief Systems Programmer in the Indian Institute of Management, Ahemadabad in 1969, which gave him a chance to be close to the latest IT developments. He joined SESA in Paris as a systems engineer in 1972 and in 1975 he worked for the systems research institute in Pune, before heading the software group in Patni Computer Systems. It was from Patni that he persuaded six colleagues to join him in starting Infosys Technologies.
Known for his visionary Management Style, Murthy has received various national and international awards, including the IT Man-of-the-year in 1996 and other awards for his leadership skills. Businessweek named him in its June 1998 issue as one of its "Stars-Of-Asia". He was the chairman of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) between 1992 and 1994 and is a member of the governing councils of several central government institutions. He is also in demand as a guest lecturer at engineering and business schools, such as the Kellogg and Wharton Business Schools, and Stanford and Harvard Universities.
Infosys was founded by seven software professionals with the objective of conducting an experiment in leveraging sweat equity and creating wealthlegally and ethically. At that time however, most companies were founded on the basis of financial strength and parentage. But the original idea of Infosys was to add value to India & to create high quality jobs for bright young men and women.
The actual business of Infosys is Customised Software Development, re-engineering and maintenance in many vertical areas. They were India's first software industry to conceptualise, articulate and implement the concept of offshore software development. Infosys was also among the first Indian Software companies to be assessed at level 4 of the Capability Maturity Model of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and to obtain company wide immediate certification for ISO 9001