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FEATURE
MALAYSIA TECH MONTH 2021: IN-CONVERSATION WITH NARAYANA MURTHY – POWERED BY INTELLECT, DRIVEN BY VALUES MTM 2021 features a special session with a world-renowned leader in the digital landscape, on Malaysia’s growth from digital infancy to its current advanced tech sector, success factors for entrepreneurship and the prognosis for the future.
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or its final day and closing ceremony agenda, Malaysia Tech Month 2021 featured a special session with Narayana Murthy, the esteemed Founder of Infosys Limited, India. Murthy shared his perspective of the growth of the tech landscape in Malaysia and success factors that have put Infosys on the digital world map.
THE BIRTH OF MSC IN MALAYSIA Raymond Siva, Senior Vice President, Investment and Brand Chief Marketing Officer, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) hosted the session with Narayana Murthy. A world-renowned and award-winning leader in digital and information technology, Murthy was instrumental in the formative years of the Multimedia Supercorridor (MSC) in Malaysia in the mid-1990s. Twentyfive years ago Murthy was invited by then Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, to be a member of the international advisory council for the establishment of the MSC. Speaking about his experience working with Tun Dr Mahathir, Murthy shares the enthusiasm, energy and foresight of
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the statesman as he planned for the MSC. He reminisces spending time alone with Dr Mahathir providing his honest views on how to improve MSC. He calls the time he spent learning and sharing knowledge, under the leadership of Tun Dr Mahathir, an extraordinary and memorable affair. On Raymond’s question of Malaysia’s potential for success in MSC back in the 1990s, Murthy said that he believed that Malaysia would go from strength to strength as a result of the excellent foundation laid by the country’s leaders. “I had no doubt that Malaysia would continue to succeed and fulfil the vision of your leaders. I am very, very confident,” he stresses.
EMBARKING ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP Raymond stated that global research indicates that about 90 percent of new start-ups and 75 percent of venture-backed start-ups fail, while just under 50 percent of businesses make it to their 5th year. He asked Murthy to explain the shutting down of his first venture Softronics after just 9 months, and joining eComputer Systems before
embarking on founding Infosys. Murthy explained that he set out on an experiment on entrepreneurship in 1976 with Softronics purposed to develop software for commercial applications for the domestic market in India. Within 6 months of founding Softronics, he realised an important mistake which was the failure to test the market to assess the market potential for software services in India. “I discovered that there was hardly any domestic market for software services in India at that time,” he says. He shares that very few computers were used by corporations in India, and the policy at that time was to protect the market from international competition because India was producing some computers domestically. The computers were mostly sold to the government which brought the realisation that there was a structural problem in the market in India, that was not expected to change for at least a decade. Murthy points out that an entrepreneur should constantly scan the structure of the market to identify problems, and take action immediately. He found that Softronics had no domestic market so
