Nandan Nilekani reveals how Narayana Murthy gave him a job: 'If he had asked me to jump off...'

Nandan Nilekani is one of the six founders of Infosys.

Nandan Nilekani has recently called himself an “accidental entrepreneur” and shared how a job interview with Narayana Murthy in 1978 put him on a path that eventually led to them launching Infosys on July 2, 2981 and becoming the chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited.

Fresh out of college, Nilekani was armed with an electrical engineering degree from IIT Bombay. “I came at a time when computing was moving from mainframes to mini-computers,” he said in a conversation with LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. “When I heard about this mini-computer company, I said, ‘Wow, this sounds exciting.’”

He was referring to Patni Computer Systems in Pune where Murthy was the head of software.

“He was ambitious. He set great goals,” Nilekani said. “I would have done anything. If he asked me to jump off the cliff, I would have jumped off the cliff. It was a great experience working with him.”

Elaborating on the job interview Murthy conducted, Nilekani said, “He asked me some problem-solving questions. Fortunately, I managed to get them right, and he gave me a job.”

He added that he never set out to build a global IT giant or lead one of the most ambitious public tech projects in history. His guiding force instead was curiosity. “I get up every morning wanting to learn new things,” Nilekani said. “The future is about what only humans can do: empathy, compassion, and connecting the dots.”