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The House Where Infosys Is Born

This tiny flat, its peeling paint is why India Inc feels good

In India Inc this story may be cliche but it needs to be told this New Year’s because, as the principal character of the story says, ‘‘it’s a story that will make youngsters say, ‘If these jokers can do it, so can we’.’’

These ‘jokers’ are N R Narayana Murthy and his wife Sudha Murty, who had just moved from Mumbai to Pune. It was 1982, they took an HDFC loan, sold off their jewellery and bought a two-room flat in Padmaban Housing Society in Shivajinagar. The EMI: Rs 1,224.

Very steep. So Sudha, then a Chief Systems Analyst at Waltonnager Computer Centre, would walk 4 km to office and back everyday to save rickshaw fare. ‘‘We told each other we needed to earn at least Rs 1,300 to pay off the EMI.’’ No money for a nanny meant sending the daughter to her grandmother’s.

Four years later, they sold off the flat for Rs 2.6 lakh. Sudha says she wept a lot. ‘‘It was my first love, our first home but we didn’t have a choice,’’ she says.

For, by then, Infosys had got its first client, Bangalore-based Mico. And Murthy and wife knew it was time to move on.