INFOSYS CO-FOUNDER NARAYANA MURTHY SHARES UPDATE ON WFH AND CEO SALARY AMID PANDEMIC - REPORT  

Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy shared his thoughts over work-from-home (WFH) during the pandemic. He also spoke on how to maintain an equilibrium between the balance of power in companies and to ensure that corporate resources are misused to gain personal riches.  

Recently while speaking at an All India Management Association (AIMA) event Murthy said that corporate governance levels in India have improved considerably in the last three decades but there have been a few instances of serious governance deficits during the last five years.

"If the lowest paid employee's remuneration was Rs 2-3 lakh a year, the CEO remuneration should be Rs 70-80 lakh," he said. Further in his conversation, he noted that the primary functions of a corporate board includes ensuring a robust quality growth of both the top line and the bottom line of the company. The corporate board protects and enhances the reputation of the company as well as reviewing, critiquing, and improving the strategy by the management.

Further in his chat, Murthy said that the board also needs to identify risks and take timely action and make sure that they are working and ensuring full compliance of regulations to every statutory authority.

When asked about his views on the work-from-home model amid the pandemic, Narayana Murthy said he is not a "great fan" of WFH. He said, "I believe the office is the place to work, home is the place to spend time with your loved ones. Mixing the two is not a good idea on a long-term basis. Yeah, I understand that there is no alternative therefore, we have adapted. But this should be a short-term solution." 

"I am a great believer in the bottom line. I believe in topline, but that topline has to come with a very good bottom line because I used to say that our strategy has been to do whatever is necessary to create sustained differentiation in the marketplace to obtain industry-leading margins...I am not a great fan of acquiring companies that have low margins," Murthy added.

Giving his ideas on how, Indian IT firms must move from reactive problem solving to proactive problem solution mindset which will help increase its per capita revenue productivity. "I think if the Indian IT industry moves from being reactive problem solvers to proactive problem definers and solution providers, then our per capita revenue productivity will improve. We will become much better known and the growth will be spectacular," he finally added.