Sudha Murty on why she gave Rs 10,000 to Narayana Murthy to start Infosys

NR Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty.

Infosys, which today has a market capitalisation of around $80 billion, started with a loan of Rs 10,000 that Sudha Murty gave her husband Narayana Murthy in 1981. In an interview with Moneycontrol, Sudha Murty revealed that the money came from her personal emergency fund, saved up over the years without her husband’s knowledge.

“My mother told me when I was married, you know, you should always keep some money. And this money should be used only in emergency, not to buy sari, not to buy gold or anything,” she said. Following her mother’s advice, every month, Murty would save a small portion of her and her husband’s salary without his knowledge.

In 1981, the emergency fund amounted to Rs 10,250. It helped turn Murty into an “angel investor” in what would go on to become Infosys - one of the world’s largest IT companies that Narayana Murthy and six other software professionals founded from a one-bedroom apartment in 1981.

Murty spoke to Moneycontrol about why she decided to use her emergency fund to invest in her husband’s startup.

“Murthy described the importance of software revolution along with history of why we lost revolution,” she said. “Here is the young man, he has dreams. Whether it will happen or not, I do not know. But I knew he was a hardworking person and he wanted to do something, that this is an emergency.”

Reasoning that it was better to fail at something rather than regret never doing it, Sudha Murty decided to loan Rs 10,000 to her husband so he could launch Infosys.

“If I don't give [the money], then throughout his life, he will regret,” she reasoned. “Regret is worse than failure.

“It doesn't matter in case he fails. He can accept it and he can take up a job, but regretting, ‘I wish I could have done’ that is worse,” she said.

With this in mind, Murty gave Rs 10,000 to her husband. The remaining Rs 250 she again kept aside to restart her emergency fund.

Narayana Murthy also chipped in to add more details about the incident, saying that he was part of a group of seven people of which four had their part of the equity. Three people, however, did not have “even have that small amount of money,” he said.

“I didn't want them to feel bad and I didn't want to start the company with equity only from these four people. So I hit upon my well-practiced idea of dipping into the pocket of my wife and convinced her to give the entire 10,000,” he revealed.

All the three people returned their share in six to nine months, he added. “So it got stuck that she [Sudha Murty] was the angel investor. She was in some sense the angel investor because the other three didn't have the money. That's the reality,” he said.