N. R. Narayana Murthy (India)
Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys Technologies Limited

N. R. Narayana Murthy (Date of Birth: August 20, 1946, Education: B.E. Electrical ’67, Univ. of Mysore; M. Tech. ’69, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur) is the Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys Technologies Limited, a global Information Technology (IT) consulting and software services provider, headquartered at Bangalore, India. He served as CEO of Infosys for twenty years, handing over the reins to a fellow co-founder in March 2002. In 1999, Infosys was listed on NASDAQ (INFY).

Mr. Murthy is the chairman of the governing body of both the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. In addition, he is a member of the Board of Overseers of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Cornell University Board of Trustees, Singapore Management University Board of Trustees, the Board of Advisors for the William F. Achtmeyer Center for Global Leadership at the Tuck School of Business, the Advisory Council of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Yale University President’s Council on International Activities.
Mr. Murthy has led the corporate governance initiatives in India. He was the Chairman of the recent committee on Corporate Governance appointed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).

Mr. Murthy serves as an independent director on the board of the DBS Bank, Singapore, the largest government-owned bank in Singapore. He also serves as a director on the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India, as the co-chairman of the Indo-British Partnership, as a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry, as a member of the Asia Pacific Advisory Board of British Telecommunications plc., and as a member of the Board of New Delhi Television Ltd. (NDTV), India. He is an IT advisor to several Asian countries.

Mr. Murthy has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors. The TIME magazine “Global Tech Influentials” list (August 2004) identified Mr. Murthy as one of the ten leaders who are helping shape the future of technology. He was the first recipient of the Indo-French Forum Medal (in the year 2003), awarded by the Indo-French Forum, in recognition of his role in promoting Indo-French ties. He was voted the World Entrepreneur of the Year – 2003 by Ernst and Young. He was one of the two people named as Asia's Businessmen of the Year for 2003 by Fortune magazine. In 2001, he was named by TIME/CNN as one of the twenty-five, most influential global executives, a group selected for their lasting influence in creating new industries and reshaping markets. He was awarded the Max Schmidheiny Liberty 2001 prize (Switzerland), in recognition of his promotion of individual responsibility and liberty. In 1999, BusinessWeek named him one of the nine entrepreneurs of the year and he was also featured in the BusinessWeek’s ‘The Stars of Asia’ (for three successive years – 1998, 1999 and 2000). He has been conferred Honorary Doctorate by nine universities in India. In 1998, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, one of the premier institutes of higher learning in India, conferred on him the Distinguished Alumnus Award, and in 1996-97, he was awarded the JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award.