Fortune Magazine says he’s one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time. And I got the chance to work with him this summer during my MBA internship at Infosys. Mr Narayana Murthy is no stranger to anyone in today’s business world. In 1981 along with six other Indian businessmen he founded Infosys, an IT services company, and at the same time was instrumental in sparking the outsourcing revolution.
As the visionary founder of Infosys, Mr Murthy has built the company into one of the largest in India – helping transform the country’s economy and establishing its place on the world stage. Figures used by Fortune in their ranking of top entrepreneurs state Infosys has a market value of $32 billion (USD), sales of $6 billion (USD) and it employs more than 155,000 people worldwide. And that’s why Fortune Magazine says he’s the 10th Greatest Entrepreneur of our time.
Want to know how I got the chance to work with him?
Here’s my story:
I was employed as a software engineer at BMW in Munich when I decided to undertake an MBA. I’m French and went to a French engineering school, although most of my career has been spent working in international offices. So it was important to me to find an MBA programme that offered an international learning environment. I knew my career, going forward, would remain in a global context.
After looking around at a number of programmes, I chose The Cambridge MBA at Cambridge Judge Business School. In addition to having the right international mix I was looking for, The Cambridge MBA also delivered the programme within a year’s timeframe. I did not want to be out of employment for too long. Plus if you’re a married participant, as I am, I felt a year-long programme was more suitable for family life.
Once you arrive at CJBS your life takes off at warp speed. There is so much learning on offer inside and outside the classroom. During the first few months, like many of my classmates, I exposed myself to as many new subjects and ideas as possible. In my case, I had a taste of entrepreneurship, venture capitalism and strategic marketing. But by summer, career changing participants are expected to have made their new career choice.
During my pre-MBA time working for BMW, I was managing an Accenture team located in Hyderabad that I never had the chance to meet. So before jumping to my next career step, I wanted to gather more practical experience in corporate strategy at a company that was an industry leader for software engineering. Doing your MBA at a top school definitely opens doors to the best companies in the world and I seized the chance to do my summer internship in corporate strategy at the headquarters of Infosys in Bangalore. I felt leveraging the Cambridge MBA programme to gain more experience would only make me stronger for my post MBA employer.
Read my post next week where I’ll share my insights into the Infosys InStep Programme, discuss one of my highlights – the Business Model Competition and explain what it was like to meet Mr Murthy….
(Kurian Abraham, Laurent Liou, Narayana Murthy, Dattatya Raychowdhuri, Niloy Biswas)