Narayana Murthy named among greatest entrepreneurs

NEW YORK: Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy is among the 12 " greatest entrepreneurs of our time" according to a Fortune magazine list that is topped by Apple's late chief Steve Jobs.

It includes Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for turning "concepts into companies" and changing the "face of business".

The US publication said as the "visionary founder" of Infosys, Murthy has built "one of the largest companies in India, helping to transform that economy and put it on the world stage".

Murthy, 65, proved that "India could compete with the world by taking on the software development work that had long been the province of the West.

"As one of six co-founders of Infosys and the CEO for 21 years, Murthy helped spark the outsourcing revolution that has brought billions of dollars in wealth into the Indian economy and transformed his country into the world's back office," it said.

Fortune cited his lesson that an organisation starting from scratch must coalesce around a team of people with an enduring value system.

"It is all about sacrifice today, fulfilment tomorrow," it quotes Murthy, who is ranked 10th, as saying. "It is all about sacrifice, hard work, lots of frustration, being away from your family, in the hope that someday you will get adequate returns from that."

The list is topped by Jobs, whom Fortune calls "our generation's quintessential entrepreneur. Visionary. Inspiring. Brilliant. Mercurial."

Fortune said the most astonishing fact about Jobs was his view that market research and focus groups only limited a person's ability to innovate.