Confident he will do his best for UK: Infosys founder Narayana Murthy reacts to son-in-law Rishi Sunak becoming UK PM

Though NR Narayana Murthy is no longer involved with Infosys, he and his family still own a stake in the software services firm.

Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy congratulated son-in-law Rishi Sunak on becoming the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, the first premier of Indian origin to take charge of the nation amid challenging times.

“Congratulations to Rishi. We are proud of him and we wish him success. We are confident he will do his best for the people of the United Kingdom”, Murthy said in an email statement to Moneycontrol.

While Sunak was born and bred in the UK, there is heightened interest in India because of his Indian origins and his ties with Murthy, one of India’s most respected and prominent business leaders.

Though Murthy is no longer involved with Infosys, he and his family still own a stake in the software services firm.

Sunak’s wife and Murthy’s daughter Akshata Murty’s stake in Infosys for instance is worth roughly around $700 million. Akshata and Sunak, who met while studying at Stanford, married at The Leela Palace in Bengaluru in 2009 and have two children.

In fact, Sunak, 42, is one of the wealthiest politicians in the UK, something for which he has come under fire in the past, for being disconnected from the problems of the working class.

Sunak, whose Punjab-born grandparents emigrated first to East Africa and then to Britain, is also a rare politician in the West who’s comfortable straddling his British, Indian and Hindu roots.

In an interview many years ago with Business Standard, he had said, “British Indian is what I tick on the census, we have a category for it. I am thoroughly British, this is my home and my country, but my religious and cultural heritage is Indian, my wife is Indian. I am open about being a Hindu,” he says. He points out, for instance, that he doesn’t eat beef “and it has never been a problem”. As for America, it is different: “Religion pervades political life there, and that is not the case here, thankfully.”