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First of all, it's a great privilege to be invited by you people.
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This invitation, all this feature because my daughter Akshita is in the class of 2006.
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This is an opportunity for me to look a little bit smarter in front of her, because as you all know, no man is a hero to his children.
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[LAUGH] Throughout my talk, I'll use the term he to mean both genders, so kindly understand that I am not biased if I use the term he.
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I will speak today on the lessons that I have learned as the CEO of the company for the first 21 years.
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Even today I'm the Executive Chairman of the company, in other words, so whatever I speak is hopefully the distilled wisdom of my experience of running this company for the last 25 years or so.
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These lessons will be in general true for almost any corporation, hence, I will avoid taking any examples specific to Infosys.
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A little bit about Infosys first, it was founded in 1981 as Dean Joss said, by me and six of the software professionals.
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The mainframe monopoly had just ended or broken with robust online transaction processing available on super mini computers running multics kind of operating system.
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The PC revolution had just started with word processes and spreadsheets being available on inexpensive computers.
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Borland was about to launch the world's first sub $100 software.
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Therefore, we knew then that demand for software applications would explode and there would be opportunity for a company specializing in customized software development from a country like India.
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There was indeed another revolution sweeping the world and that is globalization.
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I define globalization as sourcing capital from where it is cheapest, sourcing talent from where it's best available, producing where it is most cost-effective and selling where the markets are.
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I would like to say where it is most profitable, without being constrained by national boundaries.
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It was very clear that those nations which had certain competitive advantage would be able to offer value in this global bazaar.
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In this era of globalization, we knew India had a clear competitive advantage in customized software development because of the availability of large number of English speaking technical talent.
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That's how Infosys was started, however, as Dean Joss pointed out, during the first 10 years our growth was inhibited by excessive friction to business in India.
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It all changed thanks to the economic reforms of 1991, let me give some data on emphasis of today.
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Last year, we closed the year at $2.
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15 billion, a net income of 550 plus million dollars, and today we have a market capitalization of approximately $20 billion.
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Banking and capital markets, retail and high tech manufacturing are the major areas of our specialization.
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We operate in 38 countries and we have development centers in seven countries including the United States.
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The company has grown at 40 plus percentage during the last 10 years.
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We were listed in India in 1993 and we got listed on NASDAQ in 1999.
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I am glad to say we have not missed a single quarter since we got listed.
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The company has been recognized for its leadership in innovation, in employee orientation and corporate governance.
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The major innovations of Infosys are many, but I will talk only about two.
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The first is the 24-hour productive day, which combines the prime time of our customers in the US with our prime time, thereby providing a 24-hour work day for our customers and compressing cycle time for them.
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The second is the global delivery model, basically, the global delivery model splits a large software development task into two groups.
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The first set of tasks have high interaction with our customers, activities like requirement definition, installation of software and rapid reaction warranty require that we be present at customer side.
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On the other hand, activities like programming, design, documentation, long term warranty can be taken up from talent rich, process driven, scalable and cost competitive development centers in countries like India.
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With such a model, customer gets best value for money and of course we provide the customer with quality software on time within budgeted calls.
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To me, the view from the top is shaped to a large extent by how people view a leader from the bottom in some sense, in fact, seriously, because in fact a leader's success is defined by how well he or she can synthesize the bird's eye view of the world with the worm's eye view of the world.
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Success to me is about taking great ideas and converting them to action through excellence.
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I am convinced that the primary resource of a corporation is its people, hence I will first talk about people and then about other issues.
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The primary job of a leader is bringing about change or bringing about transformation.
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Transformation, as you all know, is big ticket progress, progress is all about change.
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Transformation comes about because of transformation of the mindset of the people.
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We all have two instruments for progress, the first is the mind and the second is the mindset.
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To me, mind is the analytical engine that uses data to take appropriate decisions.
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On the other hand, mindset is the set of distilled conclusions that we have gathered from our experience over the years.
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Mind is what determines our aspirations, our confidence, our possibilities and in short, our behavior.
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The task of a leader, therefore, is to change the mindset of people to become positive, to become confident, to become enthusiastic, daring, and open-minded to accept change, to accept great dreams.
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A leader does it by raising the aspirations of his people, in my opinion, aspiration is the main fuel for progress.
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Aspirations help people overcome tremendous odds by working hard and smart, making personal sacrifices and putting the interest of the corporation ahead of one's own.
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Aspirations help people embrace the adage a plausible impossibility is better than a convincing possibility.
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In 1981, when we were just seven people and had revenues of $130,000, we set out to become the most respected corporation amongst 6,500 plus listed companies in India.
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It seemed at that time audacious, but it has happened today because of our aspirations.
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Most progress, I believe, gets hampered because there are many naysayers in the corporation.
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Whenever you propose something dramatic, you're not sure people will come to you and say, don't you know our context?
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It is not possible here, therefore, a leader has to overcome the naysayers pessimism and make sure they give it a try.
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Most people see the context as a constraint, but leaders must see them as opportunities.
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This is where I am often reminded of what George Bernard said and what was adopted by Robert Kennedy from George Bonardia.
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And he said, I quote him, most people see things as they are and wonder why a dream of things that never were and say why not?
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End of quote, any progress, I believe, requires smartness, lots of hard work and of course, sacrifice.
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To get people to make the sacrifices needed, a leader has to become credible and trustworthy.
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Credibility, I believe, is built through leadership by example, people watch a leader avidly and imitate him.
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Every attribute of a corporation is exemplified by its leader.
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Therefore, in everything we do, whether it's cost control or excellence or customer focus, the leaders at Infosys demonstrate their commitment to the cause.
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No wonder Mahatma Gandhi once said, and I quote him, be the change you want to see in the world.
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Therefore, a leader uses his value system to instill trust in other people.
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I have realized that there are only two things that make you more and more endearing in the marketplace, and they are being relevant to your customer, and number 2, making greater and greater impact.