Infosys Technologies co-founder and chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy, who along with six other members created a $4.6-billion technology bellwether company on borrowed funds, is setting up a venture capital fund that will put money and faith in budding entrepreneurs.
Murthy, India's IT services industry icon, has sold shares worth Rs 174.3 crore ($37 million) in the firm to set up a venture capital fund. Murthy sold a total of 800,000 shares on Wednesday and Thursday.
Infosys has said that proceeds of the sale ($37 million) will be used as seed capital for the proposed venture capital fund to be set up by Narayana Murthy in India.
"The Venture Capital Fund will encourage and support young entrepreneurs having brilliant business ideas. The Fund will primarily invest in India and may on a case-to-case basis consider investing overseas," the statement added.
As of September end, Murthy held a 0.55% stake in Infosys while his family held another 4.42% stake in India's second-largest IT services provider. His daughtar Akshata Murthy is a former associate of Siderian Ventures, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.
Murthy joins the long list of Indian technology entrepreneurs turned investors. He joins his associate and co-founder of Infosys, NS Raghavan, who quit the firm as joint MD, now runs Nadathur Investments and early stage venture capital firm Ojas Venture Partners. Another Indian tech czar, Azim Premji, also has a personal investment company called PremjiInvest, which has a corpus of $1 billion.
