Azim Premji rejected me for a job, and I am thankful to him for that: Narayana Murthy

When Azim Premji and Narayana Murthy first met, they were not meeting as the founders of two leading IT companies from India, Wipro and Infosys, respectively. Instead, Murthy was at that time working at Patni Computer Systems as head of its Software Group, and when he decided to change his job in 1979-80, he was advised to meet Premji for a similar job at the yet-to-be-started technology group at Wipro.

As per a piece written by Murthy for ET, Azim, whom Murthy found very easy to transact with, didn’t quite find him appropriate enough for the job, and Murthy can never be thankful enough for that. This led to him founding Infosys without a delay, unlike what he had originally planned.

As soon as Infosys started operating in the post-liberalisation era, relations between Azim and Murthy bettered, since both of them were on to something good, and shared a relation of mutual respect for each other. Calls, enquiring about progress and market strategies, started to happen from Premji’s end, and Murthy also never hid anything from him, knowing that they were superior to their competitors because of the pace of new ideas and their execution.

The professional relation then proceeded to their personal lives, with Premji’s wife Yasmeen becoming good friends with Murthy’s wife Sudha.

Murthy also applauds Premji as an honest person, not shying away from accepting his or Wipro's mistakes openly while also making an effort to correct them.

Other than that, one can also learn good governance from him, on how to separate management from control, including honesty, decency, fairness and courtesy in every decision he takes.

However, Murthy and Premji are not on the same page when it comes to their views on tax exemption for exports. While Murthy does not believe in any tax exemption for his industry, Premji favours continuation of tax exemption.

As Premji completes 50 successful years as the leader of Wipro today, Murthy wishes him many more years of a happy, healthy, productive and prosperous life in this role, as well as in the roles of a patriotic Indian and a leading philanthropist.