The amazing Infosys story How Infosys was born ..!!! at 9:16 AM

Photograph: Members of the Infosys start-up team in
the early days. Chairman and Chief Mentor, the iconic N R Narayana Murthy, is
seen at far left Text: George
Iype | Photographs, courtesy: Infosys Technologies
Ltd
Infosys Technologies is
one of the few Indian companies that has changed the way the world looks at
India.
No longer is India a land of snake
charmers and beggars. It is now perceived as an economic giant to reckon with,
bursting with brilliant software engineers and ambitious entrepreneurs. And
Infosys is an symbol of India's information technology glory.
Infosys has many firsts to its name: The first Indian firm to
list on Nasdaq; the first to offer stock options to its employees. . . The
company crossed $1 billion in revenues for the first time in 2004. TCS, however,
was the first Indian IT firm to top $1-bn in revenues. Infosys is an organisation that inspires awe and respect,
globally. On July 2, Infosys completed 25 years in existence. This is its
amazing success story, illustrated by rare photographs.

Photograph: Infosys founders (Left to right):
Nandan Nilekani, S Gopalakrishnan, N R Narayana Murthy, K Dinesh, N S Raghavan
and S D Shibulal.
The idea of
Infosys was born on a morning in January 1981. That fateful day, N R Narayana
Murthy and six software engineers sat in his apartment debating how they could
create a company to write software codes.
Six
months later, Infosys was registered as a private limited company on July 2,
1981. Infosys co-founder N S Raghavan's house in Matunga, northcentral Mumbai,
was its registered office. It was then known as Infosys Consultants Pvt Ltd.
What was the company's starting capital?
US $250. Murthy borrowed $250 from his wife
Sudha to start the company. The front room of Murthy's home was Infosys' first
office, although the registered office was Raghavan's home.
Who were Murthy's six friends who joined hands to launch
Infosys?
Nandan Nilekani, N S Raghavan, S
Gopalakrishnan, S D Shibulal, K Dinesh and Ashok Arora.
Are all of them still the founding directors?
Murthy is currently chief mentor and chairman
while Nilekani is the chief executive officer and managing director.
Gopalakrishnan, Shibulal and Dinesh are directors. Raghavan retired as joint
managing director in 2000. He is currently the chairman of the advisory council
of the N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at the Indian Institute
of Management, Bangalore. Ashok Arora worked for
the company till 1988 and left after selling his shares in the then unlisted
company back to the other promoters. He moved to the United States where he now
works as a consultant.

Photograph: (Left to right) Sudha Murthy, N R
Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and Rohini Nilekani, a journalist at
Bombay magazine before their wedding, at a picnic near Bangalore in the
early 1980s.
'Murthy was
always broke'
'Murthy was always broke.
He always owed me money. We used to go for dinner and he would say, 'I don't
have money with me, you pay my share, will return it to you later.' For three
years, I maintained a book of Murthy's debts to me. No, he never returned the
money and I finally tore it up after our wedding. The amount was a little over
Rs 4,000.'
-- An excerpt from Sudha Murthy's reminiscences. She is the wife
of Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy.
Those
days, Murthy wanted to do something with his life, but he had no money. Murthy
was married to Sudha on February 10, 1978, while he was working with Patni
Computers.
In 1981, it was Murthy's idea to
start Infosys. Murthy had a dream, and no money. So Sudha gave him Rs 10,000,
which she had saved without his knowledge. Murthy and his six colleagues started
Infosys in 1981.
No, it was not in Bangalore,
but in Pune that Infosys set up its first office, in 1981. The house that Murthy
and Sudha bought with a loan became the first Infosys office. As Murthy ran
Infosys, Sudha took up a job as a systems analyst with the Walchand Group of
Industries to support their household.
In 1983,
Infosys moved to Bangalore when it got its first client, Data Basics Corporation
from the United States. The first mini computer
arrived at Infosys in 1983. It was a Data General 32-bit MV8000. The very next
year Infosys switched from mini to main frames with a CAMP application for a
Data Basics customer

Photograph: Narayana Murthy (middle row, second
from left), S D Shibulal (top row, left) and Nandan Nilekani (top row, extreme
right, partly hidden) with friends at picnic near Bangalore, early
1980s.
A huge struggle, day
in and day out
When they began moving
ahead with Infosys, the founders -- Murthy, Nilekani, Shibulal and the others --
took a firm decision -- that their wives would not be involved in the running of
the company.
So after Murthy, it was Nilekani
and his wife Rohini who moved to Bangalore. But they had no house to stay. So
the Nilekanis stayed with the Murthys at their Jayanagar home in Bangalore.
Rohini took care of Murthy's son as Sudha
helped write software programmes for Infosys. There was no luxury, only
struggle, day and night. They had no car, no phone. Murthy later recalled that
it was not the luxuries of life, but the passion to create something new and
innovative that made them keep going on and on and on. Despite the struggles, the Murthys, the Nilekanis and the other
partners took time out for picnics in Bangalore
The crisis, and how Infosys began to grow
The first years of Infosys were not smooth.
Most of the founders -- Murthy, Nilekani, Dinesh, Shibulal and Gopalkrishnan --
were into writing codes. And they wanted to make an impact in the American
market.
So Infosys got its first joint venture
partners in Kurt Salmon Associates. Gopalakrishnan, who had spent time working
in the United States, was the public face of the KSA-Infosys venture in America.
But the joint venture collapsed in 1989, leaving Infosys in the lurch.
Gopalakrishnan relives the memories of those
days. "We had nothing after eight years of trying to bring up a company. Those
who studied with us had cars and houses," he says.
The collapse of the KSA joint venture led Infosys to its first
crisis. The company was on the verge of collapse. One of the founder-partners --
Ashok Arora -- was dejected with the way the company was going, and decided to
quit.
The others did not know what to do. But
Murthy had the courage of conviction. 'If you all want to leave, you can. But I
am going to stick (with it) and make it,' Murthy told them.
The other partners -- Nilekani, Gopalakrishnan,
Shibulal, Dinesh and Raghavan -- decided to stay. And thus began to germinate the seeds of Infosys' enormous
growth.

Photograph: N R Narayana Murthy in New York to sign
an agreement with American Express
The
Nasdaq listing
It is said that Infosys began
getting big breakthroughs from the US market.
How? The initial foray of Infosys into the US market was through
a company called Data Basics Corp as a 'body-shop' or on-site developer of
software for US customers. Later, Infosys formed a joint venture with Kurt
Salmon Associates to handle marketing in the United States.
Even today, Infosys derives about two-thirds of its revenue from
the United States, serving corporate clients like Reebok, Visa, Boeing, Cisco
Systems, Nordstrom and New York Life.
Infosys
is the largest publicly traded IT services exporter in India, providing services
to 315 large corporations, such as GE and Nortel, predominantly in the USA.
It was the first Indian company to list on the
Nasdaq stock exchange in 1999.
And the other
Infosys group companies?

1. Progeon Ltd: The Infosys BPO arm.
2. Infosys Technologies (Shanghai) Company Limited: The
   company's base in China.
3. Infosys Australia Pty Ltd: Infosys' Australian
   venture.
4. Infosys Consulting Inc: The company's foray into the
   consulting business.

25 years
sheer determination, and growth
In the
last 25 years, Infosys has been growing and growing.
Today, Infosys is India's second largest software exporter. It
now enjoys a strong liquidity position with over Rs 6,000 crore (Rs 60 billion)
in assets, including surplus cash.
During
2005-2006, the Infosys internal cash accruals more adequately covered working
capital requirements, capital expenditure and dividend payments leaving a
surplus of Rs 1,612 crore (Rs 16.12 billion).
As on March 2006, the company had liquid assets including
investments in liquid mutual funds of Rs 4,463 crore (Rs 44.63 billion). This
collectively makes the liquidity strength of Infosys at Rs 6,078 crore (Rs 60.78
billion).
Where are these funds parked?
These funds have been deposited with banks,
highly rated financial institutions and in liquid mutual funds. Infosys last
year derived an average yield of 4.48 per cent (tax free) from these
investments.
The company received Rs 647 crore
(Rs 6.47 billion) on exercise of stock options by employees and cash equivalents
including liquid mutual funds increased by Rs 1,612 crore during 2005-06.

Key
milestones

Year of
Incorporation :
1981
Became a public limited company
in India :
1992
ISO 9001/TickIT Certification :
1993
Attained SEI-CMM Level 4 :
1997
Listed on NASDAQ :
1999
Crossed $100 million in annual
revenues :
1999
Attained SEI-CMM Level 5 :
1999
Crossed $400 million in revenues :
2001
Crossed $ half a billion in revenues :
2002
Crossed $ billion in revenues :
2004
Crossed $ 2 billion in revenues :
2006

Photograph: The Infosys campus in Bangalore.
The fantastic Infosys campus
The
sprawling Infosys campus in Bangalore is the symbol of India's infotech growth.
It is a campus where a company's beliefs are
unique:

1. 'We want to create wealth legally and ethically.'
2. 'We believe a good night's sleep is worth a billion
   dollars.'
3. 'A small percentage of a growing pie is better than a
   large part of a shrinking pie.'

These are
the tenets that have helped India's largest software company grow into a well
respected organisation.