#narayan murthy

UK Minister Rishi Sunak’s Wife Is Richer Than The Queen: Report

<!– –> Akshata Murty’s father NRNarayana Murthy co-founded tech giant Infosys in 1981. (File) New Delhi: Akshata Murty, the Indian wife of embattled British finance minister Rishi Sunak, is richer than the queen as the daughter of a self-made tech billionaire and a no-less-formidable engineer and philanthropist mother. Mr Sunak, once seen as a future prime minister of UK, has seen his…

Education in India: A Rebirth

In March 2003, Anil Jethmal watched an episode of the television show “60 Minutes”.  That evening, the show featured a man known as “the Bill Gates of India”, Narayan Murthy, founder of the Indian technology firm, Infosys.

In a wide-ranging interview, the interviewer, Leslie Stahl, at one point, asked Murthy about the impressive “brain power” coming out in the form of graduates of IIT, the Indian Institute of Technology.  Known by executives in Silicon Valley as perhaps the most competitive in the world in which to gain admission, IIT had actually been Murthy’s son’s first choice.  Since his son was denied acceptance to IIT, he went to Cornell instead and, then, continued on to receive a fellowship and his PhD from Harvard.

Interviewer Leslie Stahl was surprised that an Ivy League school was, in effect, Murthy’s son’s “safety school”.  While watching, though, Anil Jethmal, was not surprised at all. After all, members of Anil’s own family had been accepted to and attended Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cornell, Brown and Stanford.  For some of them, IIT was actually their first choice.

Yet, in the west, most people outside of Silicon Valley have not even heard of IIT.  But within Silicon Valley, graduates of IIT are so well regarded that they have standing job offers at US firms.  Silicon Valley executives do not even require an interview from them. This is due to the fact that IIT’s vetting process for admission and consistent high quality of graduates has led to fierce hiring competition among those elite US firms.  It is hard to argue with the results.  Many of today’s most successful CEOs in the US received their education at IIT.

Many in the west wonder what happened that made an Indian institution, all of a sudden, such a gold mine of talent.  Anil Jethmal is quick to point out that India, prior to IIT, was home to the world’s best university for 800 years.

Before Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Sorbonne, Cambridge, Oxford, etc. ever existed, the world’s best university was India’s own Nalanda University.  Educating the best and the brightest as far east as Turkey, Persia, India, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea and Indonesia…and as far west as Europe, Nalanda was every bit as prestigious as all the Ivy League schools combined are today.  

Nalanda taught religion, literature, astronomy, medicine, fine arts, mathematics, politics and much more. Its dormitories housed 10,000 students and 2000 professors.  Being accepted to Nalanda, like IIT, was very difficult.  One had to pass three rigorous tests in order to even be considered. Until its destruction by foreign invaders in the 12th century, its graduates, like those of ITT, were world leaders in many fields.

And, of course, subsequent to the destruction of Nalanda, from the mid-18th century to the mid-20th century, the British Raj did not allow most Indians to receive an education.  In fact, when the British were forced out in 1947, the literacy rate in India was below 17%.

SugerMint profiles a list of top entrepreneurs in India who made it big from the scratch. The list of Indian entrepreneurs will serve as an inspiration for those hoping to make it big in the entrepreneur world.

Narayan Murthy’s son-in-law Rishi Sunak is the new UK finance minister

The Hush Post | 7:22 pm | One-minute read |

Britain Prime Minister Boris Johnson has appointed India-origin politician Rishi Sunak as his finance minister. Rishi Sunak is the son-in-law of Infosys co-founder Narayan Murthy. Boris appointed Sunak as Chancellor of the Exchequer after Sajid Javid resigned in a shock development on Thursday.

39-year-old Rishi Sunak is an MP from Richmond in…

What is ailing India’s bellwether behemoth

There was a time, till not so long ago when a job at Infosys used to be a crucial factor in arranging marriages in India. The enormity of influence Infosys used to have over the Indian job market has parallels with Siemens in Germany. I have heard of small towns in Germany with an office of Siemens and one or more people from every house in the town working there. A job in the Indian IT sector…

Mail sent by Narayan Murthy to all Infosys staff: