‘I missed the exam, I was not feeling well’: Nandan Nilekani reveals what led him to co-found Infosys

Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani has opened up about the unusual way he went on to become one of the trailblazers of the Indian IT industry, building a company that emerged as the second-largest technology firm in the country.

In an interview with Groww, Nandan Nilekani said that he met NR Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys, when he decided to drop out of his Indian Institute of Management (IIM) exam.

Nilekani revealed that he missed the IIM entrance exam as he was not feeling well, and was “too lazy” to apply for SAT and GMAT.

“I came out of IIT (Bombay) and I thought I'll do IIM. But I missed the exam. I was not feeling well that day. So, I didn't take the entrance exam. I had been too lazy to apply for SAT and GMAT. So, I was actually at a loose end — what do I do next,” he said.

That is when he heard about Patni Computer Systems, a Mumbai-based company that was dealing with mini computers — a rare gem in those days.

“Somebody told me there's a company in Nariman Point. Why don't you go and talk to them? I heard about this small company called Patni Computer Systems. In 1977, IBM left India. So, there was a sort of a vacuum here...I heard they had online computers - in those days, that was a big deal,” he said in the interview.

Meeting Narayana Murthy

It was at Patni Computer Systems that Nandan Nilekani met Narayana Murthy, with whom he went on to co-found Infosys and scale it to one of India's biggest tech giants.

“I walked into this room, met Murthy, who asked me some puzzle and said - you can join. So, I joined,” Nilekani said.

Starting Infosys

On being asked about whose idea it was to start Infosys, Nandan Nilekani passed the credit to Narayana Murthy.

“That was Murthy's vision. He always wanted to start a company. He's about 10 years older than me. We all worked for him and we started Infosys,” he said.

Nilekani recalled how they scaled up Infosys as a company.

“By the early 1990s, India had changed a lot - you had economic reforms, the market opened up, and global companies started coming.”

“We realised that unless we think big, we're not going to make it. So, we went into this scale thing and built India's first campus in 1992...five acres in Electronic City,” he said.

Nilekani recalled how in the early days they protested to get a road built in front of the campus.

“There was no road as well. Then we did dharna to get the road built,” he said.

“We always set very large goals. Get to 100 million, get to billion, get to whatever 10 billion,” Nilekani added.

Nandan Nilekani, NR Narayana Murthy and five others left Patni to start their own company, Infosys, in 1981. Nilekani was the CEO of Infosys between 2002 and 2007.