BENGALURU: Infosys founders NR Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani said startup founders must earn respect of all the stakeholders and ensure financial discipline to build robust companies.
“Will I be able to earn the respect of all my stakeholders 20 or 40 years from now. The moment I ask a question on respect, everything falls in place --austerity, focus on excellence, repeat customers and attracting good employees. I would sincerely request entrepreneurs to take a few minutes from their busy schedules and think about issues that I have raised -- how do we earn the respect of every stakeholder,” Murthy said, when asked a question on the new-age startup founders.
Nilekani said one of Murthy’s philosophies is that happiness is a positive cash flow. “We have all absorbed that. I keep asking Nilanjan (CFO) how much of incremental cash we have in the balance sheet every month, and that I learnt from him (Murthy). If you’re not having positive cash flow and you’re burning cash, you lose discipline. You spend a lot of money and energy in acquiring customers,” he said.
Murthy on giving Nandan Nilekani a tough learnability test 43 years agoNandan walked into my room in PCS on 18 Feb, 1979. I gave a tough learnability test, and Nandan got 50 out of 50. I wasn’t satisfied. I regarded this as winning the semifinals, but there’s a tougher game to play. So, I developed an IQ test for matrix rotation that’s an interesting test. Intelligent people solved it in 1.5 minutes, reasonably intelligent people solved it in 500 seconds. He (Nilekani) did it in a minute.
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