Infosys Technologies Ltd. Biography...How The biggest Indian IT Firm came into existance...

How a few youngsters’ dream and determination to prove themselves gave rise to one of the most respected Indian I.T companies.
Timeline: In 1981, IBM in US launches its first PC which uses Microsoft Software MS DOS and the term INTERNET first mentioned and in Pune July1981, on a day between monsoon and winter 7 youngsters came together with just 10,000 rupees to give shape to an idea that in 28 years became one of the most respected I.T companies in world. They were N.R. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, N.S. Raghavan, Kris Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K. Dinesh and Ashok Arora. “Seven of us met in 1981 to start something new in India and we were looking out for the global opportunities. We came together because we were sold on the idea and were passionate about the it” says Kris Gopalakrishnan. This was by no means N.R. Narayana Murthy’s first entrepreneurial venture. The first attempt was a company called Softronics, an IT consulting firm in 1976. The lacks of response by the domestic market lead to its closure, and he joined Patani Computers. When the company was incorporated in July 1981 Murthy did not become employee Number one rather it was N.S. Raghavan, because Murthy was committed to finish two projects for Patani and it was only in March 1982 that he was able to join the company.
India in the early 80’s was by no means a fertile ground for entrepreneurship ventures, sweeping liberalising reforms were a decade away and the company which was registered as a proprietary company at a co-founders house did not even have a computer for 2 years as the red tape needed to acquire a computer at that time was numerous. Archaic import restrictions limited the company’s ability to bring crucial equipment into the country. This new company had not only been through the stock problems faced by a young company but also the additional problems of dealing in an area which is relatively unknown in the country. The journey from struggling start-up to multibillion-dollar multinational offers several lessons for entrepreneurs, Gopalakrishnan says Two essential leadership traits are courage and visions — which keep the entrepreneur and employees focused not just on short-term goals, but also on aspirations. While today we are dazzled by stories of tech firms minting overnight millionaires, Gopalakrishnan said that for Infosys, it was a rocky road at the start. “Definitely, the initial years were quite difficult.”

The Early Trials & Failures
In 1983, for instance, the company could not get venture capital or bank financing to expand, largely because very few investors understood the business or its potential. There were no venture capital firms then to pump investment into the company, and India had many currency restrictions. Eventually, the government provided some funding for growth. Despite some successes, by 1989 the Infosys founders felt they were just spinning their wheels. Their peers outside the business were getting on with their lives, while Gopalakrishnan and his partners had devoted eight years to their vision and seemingly had “nothing to show for it…. We almost gave up.” Through the 1980s, there were few big contracts. The founders kept their salaries low, Nandan Nilekani, the company’s Ex-Chief Executive, who in the early days would share a scooter with co-founder S.D. Shibulal as they drove around Bangalore looking for business.
One of Infosys’ early go-to-market vehicles was a joint venture with KSA, KSA-Infosys. And Kris, who spent much of the 1980s in the US, was Infosys’ face in the joint venture. The joint venture collapsed in 1989.Infosys almost wound up in 1989. “Our peers had cars and houses,” to quote Kris from an older interview referring to one reason for what he calls “a major introspection” that happened in 1989. “And we had nothing.” The JV with KSA collapsed in that year. Arora, too, decided to leave that year. Gopalakrishnan and his colleagues began to think “things will change.” Things did certainly change. The change was heralded by massive policy reform in India, business exploded during the 1990s, not only for Infosys but for the whole of Indian industry and leading up to Infosys’ listing on the NASDAQ. This was a ‘first’ for an Indian company and one of the many firsts for Infosys. In 2002, Business World called Infosys “India’s Most Respected Company.”
One thing the Infosys founders had on their side in 1981 was youth. Kris says ” We were 25 when we started Infosys, when you are young that is the right time to take risk because as you grow old responsibilities burden up and you don’t want to take the risk built, today being a youth you can afford to take risk” At the company’s outset, “there was no expectation; we had nothing to lose.” But, he said, the relative stability and comforts of having a job begin to erode the adventurous spirit required for successful entrepreneurship. Kris is very excited about the entrepreneurship wave in the colleges-“I am quite pleased with the great interest that entrepreneurship is generating in various campus and students I meet. They are ready to try their hand at that.” He was happy about the initiatives taken by Techno Park TBI “Technopark incubator helps you with the challenge and face the situation on your own but having people who can mentor you in various aspects will give you an advantage.”

This was one advantage the founding members of Infosys never had. They did not know what to expect, but Gopalakrishnan and his fellow co-founders set the bar high for themselves as they wanted to build a globally respected corporation. The mission statement was “aspiration” but the effect of committing to such a declaration was that every consideration, decision and action of each employee in the company has been calibrated and compared to world class standards. That explains why the company made its global initial public offering on the United States’ NASDAQ stock exchange in 1999.Infosys complies with the requirements of the stringent Sarbanes-Oxley accounting rules, even though as an Indian company, it doesn’t have to. “To become a global company, we must go up with the best companies in the world.” Moves like the NASDAQ IPO had motives beyond raising capital. They raise the company’s profile and by offering transparency, demonstrate that it is possible to run a business legally and ethically in India. Infosys’ culture is hardly typical of India, a country where businesses long thrived on government protection and tax manipulation and where the corporate world was dominated by a tiny clique of family-owned conglomerates.