Narayana Murthy Advocates ‘Compassionate Capitalism’ to Bridge Pay Gaps and Uplift Employees:

Infosys' founder NR Narayana Murthy claimed businesses need to implement “compassionate capitalism” in hiring and focus on treating their workers as people by narrowing the income disparity on March 12.

Everyone in the organization deserves to be treated with basic civility and decency. "Completely appreciate and acknowledge people on a stage, blame them in secret, and as much as is feasible, let the benefits of the organization flow freely to all its members of staff," he continued.

In his previous statements, Murthy pointed out that India's entrepreneurs embracing compassionately capitalistic mindsets will drive developmental and poverty alleviation efforts. He had previously been criticized for his remarks about the 70-hour working week, emphasizing the need for the youth of India to work hard if the nation aspires to be a global leader.

Murthy asserts that the nation is unable to flourish with the current socialistic attitude and stated this during the conversation with ex TiE Mumbai president Harish Mehta at The TiE Con Mumbai 2025 conference.

“It is all about giving people the chance to come up with novel ideas that earn them and their investors money, create employment opportunities for people and help minimize poverty, and pay taxes which can then be used to facilitate a lot of public good work, ” Murthy said.

He further developed on the notion of "compassionate capitalism."

Murthy emphasized the importance of entrepreneurs as “evangelists” of capitalism, stating that their development will shape the manner in which nationalism will be viewed in a country with a long standing history of socialism.

“Every one of us needs to behave in such a manner that those all sceptics would also say, ‘Yes there is something good in this thing called capitalism, and there is something good in entrepreneurship.’ And to achieve this, we all have to become violent evangelists and we have to walk the talk because there is no way to make changes by just saying wonderful things and not doing anything,” he said.

How Murthy Walked His Talk

Mehta recounted an experience from the early days of Nasscom association, which started with a comprises of 50-60 companies and already had losses and expenses from the start. Every company was required to contribute around Rs. 25000 every month as a sustenance fee- which was substantial back then.

When the gross losses escalated, and suddenly there was no savings accounted with it, Murthy came forward to offer his training programs on IBM AS400 computers at the Infosys offices. There was a huge skill gap in operating those machines, and those who could do it, were very few in the IT sector.

“So, he conducted training programs at the Infosys campus on AS400, invited all his competitors. They can send their best software engineer for training, and the entire contribution of that was given to Nasscom to fund the losses. Now imagine you're inviting your competitors, best engineers, you train them to compete with you tomorrow,” said Mehta.

“Murthy had a vision and that was looking beyond How will Nasscom as an institute survive and grow in the long run. Because thinking of India as first, thinking of the industry as first, and within that working with competitors became the core idea for his philosophy, and naturally it was also facilitated by the industry association,,” he said.

Mehta was one of the founding members of Nasscom and the first president. While, Murthy was later chosen as the vice president.