When Infosys just had a one-room office: Co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan's throwback

Kris Gopalakrishnan.

Infosys, one of India's most-respected IT companies, began in 1981, an enterprise of seven young engineers -- NR Narayana Murthy, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Nandan Nilekani, SD Shibulal, K Dinesh, Ashok Arora and NS Raghavan.

In their early days, the founders shared apartments and workspaces -- experiences that forged life-long friendships.

Infosys' office in Bengaluru's Jayanagar had just one private cabin, Kris Gopalakrishnan told Moneycontrol in an interview.

"Whoever comes first or whoever has customer meetings gets that office and the rest of us would kind of hang around outside because we didn't have space to sit," he said. "So, these are the experiences that made Infosys what it is today."

Leaders in IT will continue to be leaders for quite some time: Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan

In the first 10 years of Infosys, Gopalakrishnan and his colleagues lived "hand-to-mouth". He said invoices determined whether or not they would get paid.

"We were lucky that some of the customers were willing to pay us in advance," Gopalakrishnan said. "We would raise the invoice on the first and before the 15th, we would get paid. So that the next month salaries could be paid."

These initial hardships brought the group even closer.

"We became friends, our families became friends with each other," the Infosys co-founder said. "And that friendship happened because of these experiences, right? We have all shared apartments, cooked food together. All kinds of sharing, sharing office spaces."

Gopalakrishnan had his latest book published earlier this year. Called  Against All Odds: The IT story of India, it delves into the impact of the IT industry and the prominent people who helped build it.

Infosys marked four decades of its journey this month. On the occasion, NR Narayana Murthy had also spoken to Moneycontrol and reflected on the Infosys story.

He told us about outlining Infosys' values at the outset.

"Right from the first day the seven of us sat down in my one-bedroom apartment in Mumbai, after a three-hour-long discussion, we came to the unanimous conclusion that respect from our stakeholders would be our number one target," he said. "Respect from customers, respect from employees, respect from investors, respect from the government of the land, respect from vendor partners, and respect from society."

Also read: My wife was my safety net, supported my dream: NR Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty on the Infosys journey and their life goals