Infosys' NR Narayana Murthy has a strong advice for troubled start-up founders: 'Accept your mistakes'

At a time, when the Indian start-up landscape is booming with thousands of new and successful ventures, there are start-ups that have struggled after tasting initial success. N.R. Narayana Murthy, the founder of the country’s leading information technology giant Infosys and one of the most prominent intellectuals in the space, has some advice for the beleaguered start-up founders.

Talking at the Business Today Tech Today Congress, Murthy emphasised on the importance of accepting their mistakes and course correction that may help them rejuvenate. According to him, identifying the mistakes and quickly change the path would be crucial for the founders.

“These are all youngsters and they are highly impressionable. And, therefore, prone to committing mistakes. We should not be extremely harsh on them. But as long as they are willing to learn from their mistakes, quickly change their path and move towards what is in the interest of every stakeholder they should be fine," he said.

Additionally, “as long as possible, they need to tell all of their stakeholders that see, some of you have lost some money. Therefore, what we will do is we will run the corporation very well, we will create a certain kitty and we will do good social service. And second, for those of you who have a part of your stocks in the company, we will work 10 times hard and make sure that money will grow and compensate for whatever losses we have made”, Narayana Murthy added.

Apart from the young start-up founders, Murthy also spoke about the importance of merit and values in prosperity of a nation and companies alike. According to him, to prosper, any nation has to revere and practise meritocracy, a set of values and live in peace with its neighbours. “The reason is you don’t want to spend too much of hard-earned money on defending yourself against hostile neighbours. If you look at any national which have gone up, in the past 50-60 years, have valued meritocracy and a set of values among leaders across all avenues in the country and a mechanism to live in peace with its neighbours,” he explained.

This formula is not only fit for nations that are willing to prosper but to corporations too. “If you want to have long term investors, they need to trust you with your money. They must feel you are working hard, leading a reasonably simple life and thus will provide good growth rate in both topline and bottom-line. And importantly, no corporation can prosper by taking up a fight with its competitors/peers - just like a nation. In a war, the winner loses and the loser dies,” Murthy said.