NR Narayana Murthy: 'Azim Premji told me that one of the biggest mistakes he made was not to hire me'

Both Murthy and his wife Sudha Murty admitted that had things turned out differently, Azim Premji and Wipro may not have had any competition.

India's rise in the field of Information Technology (IT), over the years, has happened due to the contribution of several corporate leaders, who have combined hard work with innovation to help the country excel and attain success.

Perhaps at the foremost of the rise was Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy, who was one of the seven men who founded the company in 1981 and paved the way for several others to hop on the path of IT development in India.

But the 77-year-old nearly did not play a pivotal role in Infosys' growth as he recently revealed that Wipro's Azim Premji told him that not hiring Murthy was one of the biggest mistakes he made.

"Azim (Premji) once told me that one of the biggest mistakes he committed was not to hire me," Murthy told CNBC-TV18 in an interview.

Additionally, both Murthy and his wife Sudha Murty admitted that had things turned out differently, Premji and Wipro may not have had any competition.

Interestingly, Wipro's connection in Murthy's life is not merely restricted to Premji not hiring him. The couple's mutual friend Prasanna, who went on to become the CMO at Wipro, played a key role in their relationship. Prasanna was Murty's co-worker at Telco, now known as Tata Motors.

In October, Murthy had said, in a podcast, that if India's overall work productivity needed to improve then the country's youth needed to work 70 hours in a week.

The 77-year-old defended those views in the interview and said that many of his friends from the west called him and were very happy.