Naukri.com's Sanjeev Bikhchandani backs NR Narayana Murthy's 70-hour work week advice: 'You can't push off at 5 pm'

Backing NR Narayana Murthy's views, Sanjeev Bikhchandani referred to 70 hours a week as "not religion" and reiterated that the concept was aimed at suggesting to put in the hard yards. 

Ever since Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy said in 3one4 Capital’s podcast "The Record" that India's youth must work for 70 hours every week to improve the country's overall work productivity, leading personalities from different industries have weighed in on his words and put forth their personal thoughts.

While some such as Sajjan Jindal and Suniel Shetty backed Murthy's views, others such as Harsh Goenka chose to differ with him.

The latest to support Murthy's suggestion was chairman of Info Edge, which owns Naukri.com, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, who said that one cannot leave the workplace at a certain time of the day or demand for leaves on weekends, to succeed.

"You can't push off at 5 pm and say 'ab ho gaya'. You can't say 'Saturday, Sunday main kaam nahi karta' (I don't work on weekends). Apko karna padega (you will have to), if you want to succeed."

"Ek kamyab entrepreneur dikhado (show one successful entrepreneur) who in the first 5-10 years did not have this work ethic and succeeded. It doesn't happen. So, nobody is saying work 70 hours by the clock, but you may have to," he said on Jivraj Singh Sachar's "The Indian Silicon Valley Podcast".

Bikhchandani referred to 70 hours a week as "not religion" and reiterated that the concept was aimed at suggesting to put in the hard yards, which may or may not be more than what an average professional was doing currently.

"70 hours a week is not religion. I think the concept was to be prepared to work as hard as required and that may be much harder than you're working right now," he said.

Recalling the early days of his career, Bikhchandani said that despite working in a eight-hour, five-day work week job,  he chose to work on weekends and did so for three years.

"If I go back to my career. My first three years in advertising. It was technically a 5-day week - 9:15 to 5:45. But, I used to be in office till 8:30. Why? Because (there were) manual type writers in those days. We had two-three typists in the office."

"Everybody used to share them. Now, you want to write your letters to clients - your memos and your letters, which are typed. Typing was a scarce resource. So, the guy could only turn out 8, 10, 12, 20 documents a day. (It was) First in first out. You would get in early in the morning to make sure your letter was on top. So, you came 8:30 (am), hand wrote your letter and made sure before the guy comes in, you're on top.

"Now, others who didn't come in, didn't get the letters out in time. I went the extra mile. I didn't take a single day's leave. I worked all Saturdays, maybe Sundays, for 3 years," he said.

Ever since making the comments for the first time in October, Murthy has reiterated that he supported his views and even said that when Infosys worked six days a week, he worked for 85-90 hours every week.

Also read: Narayana Murthy says he used to work 6.5 days a week: 'Leave home at 6 am'