In 1981, Narayana Murthy founded Infosys, a global software consulting company headquartered in Bangalore, He served as the CEO of Infosys during 1981 – 2002, as the Chairman and Chief Mentor during 1981 – 2011, and as the Chairman Emeritus during August 2011 – May 2013. Under his leadership, Infosys was listed on NASDAQ in 1999.
Mr. Murthy articulated, designed, and implemented the Global Delivery Model, which has become the foundation for the huge success in IT services outsourcing from India. He has led key corporate governance initiatives in India. He is an IT advisor to several Asian countries.
He serves on the boards of Ford Foundation, United Nations Foundation and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He is a member of the University of Tokyo's Global Advisory Board. He has served as a member of the HSBC board and the Unilever board. He has served on the boards of Cornell University, Wharton School, Rhodes Trust and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He has also served as the Chairman of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Mr. Murthy co-chaired the World Economic Forum, Davos in 2005. He was awarded the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal for Global Innovation by the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He was listed among the '12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time', by the Fortune magazine in 2012. The Economist ranked him among the 10 most-admired global business leaders in 2005. In 2014, he was ranked 13th among CNBC's 25 global business leaders who have made maximum impact on society during the last 25 years. Mr. Murthy is ranked among the top 10 of the Financial Times' list of "Business pioneers in technology", published in March 2015. He is the first Indian winner of Ernst and Young's World Entrepreneur of the Year award.
He is a foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. He is the recipient of the 2012 Hoover Medal. The Tech Museum, San Jose, awarded him the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award in 2012. He received the 2007 Ernst Weber Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, USA (IEEE).
He has been awarded the Legion d'honneur by the Government of France, the CBE by the British government and the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India.
He has also received the Max Schmidheiny Liberty prize. He has appeared in the rankings of businessmen and innovators published by BusinessWeek, Time, CNN, Fortune, Forbes, Financial Times and India Today.
He is also a Trustee of the Infosys Science Foundation, which governs the Infosys Prize, an annual award, to honor outstanding achievements of researchers and scientists across six categories.