Sudha Murthy: Humility personified

There’s just so much to learn from Sudha Kulkarni Murthy. Wife of N R Narayana Infosys Murthy, Sudha isn’t your average entrepreneur’s wife. Yes, she took care of their kids while her husband focused on bringing up Infosys, but she is also sure of her own place under the sun – after all, she made it herself.

As she says in one of her now-famous essays, “Have I lost my identity as a woman, in Murthy’s shadow? …. Like all women, I play different roles. That doesn’t mean we don’t have our own identity. Women have their extra quality of adaptability and learn to fit into different shoes. But we are our own selves still. And we have to exact our freedom by making the right choices in our lives, dictated by us, and not by the world.”

An electrical engineer, she was the first women engineer to take up the job at a shop floor of an auto company (Tata Motors, then called Telco), after she wrote a strongly-worded letter to JRD Tata about not allowing women on the shop floor! You can easily sense grit and strength in the lady who gave her husband all her rainy-day savings (nearly Rs 10,000) to start a software company in 1980. She is said to have given him three years to chase his dreams while she would take care of the more practical matters and continue to work in Telco, while helping out her husband with company affairs, too.

Today, Sudha not only heads the philanthropic arm of Infosys, but has also set up several orphanages, pledged to provide library and computer facilities in all government schools in Karnataka, and is also a printed author of several fiction books. She was also awarded the highest civilian award, the Padma Shri in 2006.