Narayana Murthy and Infosys

The Strategist

From the beginning, Narayana Murthy focused on the world's most challenging market - the US. He had two reasons for this. First, there was no market for software in India at the time. He believed that Indian software companies should export products in which they had a competitive advantage. In 1987, Infosys entered into a joint venture with Kurt Salmon Associates (KSA), a leading global management consultancy firm. KSA-Infosys was the first Indo-American joint venture in the US. In 1988-89, Infosys set up its first office in the US. Reebok of France was looking for a software system to handle its distribution management at the same time.

Infosys bagged the contract and developed the Distribution Management Application Package (DMAP)⁵ for Reebok's French operations. Infosys decided to use this package to create a standard application package for similar operations of any company. In 1989, Infosys bagged another major contract from Digital Equipment. In the early 1990s, with the opening up of the Indian economy, many export-oriented software companies were set up in India that created the momentum: Infosys leveraged this very successfully. By mid-1990s, Infosys was competing not only with Indian software majors like Tata Consultancy Services⁶, and Wipro⁷, but also with overseas players like Cambridge Technology Partners and Sapinet, which offered software solutions. Narayana Murthy believed that Indian software professionals had the ability to deal with complex projects.

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5] DMAP integrated databases and data-crunching tools in forecasting, purchasing, warehousing, sales management, credit control, customer services, sales ledger, claims and disputes, operations and security, apart from finance and decision support systems.

6] Tata Consultancy Services offers strategy consulting and system integration services to help organizations plan and build their businesses in the eEconomy.

7] Wipro Technologies, based in Bangalore, India, is the global technology services division of Wipro Limited. Established about two decades back, the company offers services for business transformation and product realization and also solutions for the service provider market.

Case Details

Case Code : LDEN003
Themes: Corporate Social Responsibility, Great Leaders
Case Length : 8 Pages
Period : 1981-2001
Organization : Infosys
Pub Date : 2002
Teaching Note : Available
Countries : India
Industry : Software

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