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Infosys was founded on 2 July 1981 in Pune by Mr.N.R.Narayana Murthy and six others: Mr.Nandan Nilekani, Mr. N.S.Raghavan, Mr.Kris Gopalakrishnan, Mr.S.D.Shibulal, Mr.Ashok Arora and Mr. K. Dinesh, with N. S. Raghavan officially being the first employee of the company. Founders started the company with an initial investment of INR 10,000. The company was incorporated as "Infosys Consultants Pvt Ltd." in Model Colony, Pune as the registered office.
In 1982, Infosys opened an office in Bangalore which soon became its headquarters.
Infosys went public in 1993. Interestingly, Infosys IPO was undersubscribed but it was bailed out by US investment banker, Morgan Stanley which picked up 13% of equity at the offer price of Rs. 95 per share. The share price surged to Rs. 8,100 by 1999. By the year 2000 Infosys's shares touched Rs. 15,600 before the catastrophic incident of 9/11, changed all that.
According to Forbes magazine, since listing on the Bombay Stock Exchange till the year 2000, Infosys' sales and earnings compounded at more than 70% a year. In the year 2000, President of the United States Bill Clinton complimented India on its achievements in high technology areas citing the example of Infosys. In 2001, it was rated Best Employer in India by Business Today. Infosys was rated best employer to work for in 2000, 2001, and 2002 by Hewitt Associates. In 2007, Infosys received over 1.3 million applications and hired fewer than 3% of applicants. Infosys won the Global MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises) award, for the years 2003, 2004 and 2005, being the only Indian company to win this award and is inducted into the Global Hall of Fame for the same. BUSINESS WEEK reported that Infosys, along with Wipro and TCS accounted for nearly 80% of the petitions approved in 2007 for the top 10 participants in the program.
Infosys offerings span business and technology consulting, application service, systems integration, product engineering, custom software development, maintenance, re-engineering, independent testing and validation services. IT infrastructure services and business process outsourcing.
Initiatives
In 1996, Infosys created the Infosys Foundation in the state of Karnataka, operating in the areas of health care, social rehabilitation and rural uplift, education, arts and culture. Since then, this foundation has spread to the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andra Pradesh, Maharastra, Kerala,Orissa and Punjab. The Infosys Foundation is headed by Mrs.Sudha Murthy, wife of Founder Cum Chief Mentor Narayana Murthy.Since 2004, Infosys has embarked on a series of initiatives to consolidate and formalize its academic relationships worldwide under the umbrella of a program called AcE - Academic Entente. Infosys' Global Internship Program, known as InStep, is one of the key components of the Academic Entente initiative. It offers live projects to interns from the universities around the world. InStep recruits undergraduate, graduate and PhD students from business, technology, and liberal arts universities to take part in an 8 to 24 week internship at one of Infosys' global offices. InStep interns are also provided career opportunities with Infosys.
In 1997, Infosys started the "Catch them Young Programme", to expose the urban youth to the world of Information Technology by conducting a summer vacation programme. The programme is aimed at developing an interest and understanding of computer science and information technology. This programme is targeted at students in Grade IX level.
Infosys also has the largest training center for a private sector organization in Asia. The training center is located in Mysore, Karnataka. It currently accommodates 4,500 trainees each year. In 2009, a new training center has been opened which accommodates 10,000 trainee software professionals. This new center is also located in Mysore.
