Kathmandu:

Infosys, Wipro and TCS are India’s three largest information technology (IT) companies. Narayana N R Murthy, chairman and CEO along with six other professionals founded Infosys in 1981. All that the legendary founders could put together, on a fateful day in July 1981 was Rs 16,000 Indian Currency (IC), given to them by their wives. The seven founders had decided, against the advice of their friends and relatives, to give up lucrative and safe job prospects in big corporations for the sake of an uncertain future based on a dream.

Though the company had no capital, its founders had, in the words of Murthy, plenty of “confidence, commitment, passion, hope, energy, enthusiasm and the capacity for hard work”. They were to need all these qualities in abundance for the first 10 years of their existence. From 1981 to 1991 the company seemed to be going nowhere.

Infosys was just another company mired in the clutches of India’s government. Infosys’s idea to use India’s professionals for providing the industrialised countries, notably North America, Europe and Japan with customised software, at prices which could not be matched was sound. However, India was a closed economy and its bureaucracy created hurdle after hurdle for the company.

In the days of India’s ‘licence raj’ the tasks which the founders ended up doing had nothing to do with fulfilling their dreams. The energy and ability of Infosys’s professionals was utili-zed to handle the red tape emanating from the officialdom which could not care less about the company’s attempts to be a globalised corporation.

Murthy said in a speech in the US at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton school, “To illustrate, it took us a year to obtain a telephone connection, two years to get a licence to import a computer, and 15 days to get foreign currency for travel abroad.”

Murthy went on to tell his story, “Louis Pasteur once said: Chance favours the prepared mind. Thus, as we were struggling along, the Indian economic reforms of 1991 came as a heaven-sent opportunity for us at Infosys. These watershed reforms – likened by some to the winning of economic freedom, on the lines of the securing of political freedom from British rule in 1947 — changed the Indian business context from one of state-centered, control orientation to a free, open market orientation, at least for hi-tech companies. We, at Infosys, leveraged the positives of liberalisation, the opening up of the Indian economy, and we have never looked back. The lesson from the Indian experience: free trade can bring great benefits to society.”

Murthy has become a legend, but would it have happened if India had not opened up its economy in 1991? Murthy does not think so, perhaps his company would still be in existence, but would be a small obscure one, like thousands of others, its potential never realised.

To paraphrase Thomas Hardy’s famous lines, Infosys would, but for India’s opening up, have been like a gem lying at the bottom of the ocean with its glory unknown to anyone including itself. What is the value of the gem today? India’s foremost company is listed on the Indian, US and Japanese stock exchanges. Its worth exceeded $19 billion on July 13, 2005. And it all started with $250 in 1981.

Are there not people in Nepal capable of forming world-beating corporations? You, who are reading this — are you one of them? We will never know unless Nepal opens its doors, embraces globalisation and free trade.

It is not only for Murthys of Nepal that we seek to globalise. Infosys success meant success and well-being for each of its employees. The company has created more millionaires than any other company in India. Thanks to stock options, even Murthy’s chauffeur became a crorepati. Let us begin the process of unearthing Nepal’s gems. Let us globalise. Let us embrace free trade. Let us have economic freedom.

(The writer can be contacted at: everest@mos.com.np)