Shri N R Narayana Murthy (March - 2023) | IIMA Archives Monthly Snippets @ IIMA Archives

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This month's archival snippet focuses on Shri N R Narayana Murthy who was Chief Systems Programmer from 1969 to 1971 at IIMA and Chairperson of IIMA from March 11, 2002 to March 10, 2007. During his tenure as Chairperson, he was instrumental in laying the foundations for the institute's financial autonomy and shaping many aspects of the academic culture of the institute. We are proud to have him as our Chief Guest for Convocation 2023. Here are some interesting stories from our Archives. After graduating from IIT Kanpur with a master's, he had three job offers, from TELCO, TISCO and Air India. These jobs offered him a salary of about 1600 rupees per month. He joined IIMA at a salary of 800 rupees per month. Being at IIMA was a positive experience for him, as it allowed him to gain knowledge and experience in the field of computer programming. During his time at IIMA's computer centre, he and Prof. J. G. Krishnayya embarked on an ambitious project to develop a basic interpreter for the Electronics Corporation of India. For that, they had to develop a simulator of ECIL TDC-312 on the IIMA machine. They took an important step in the development of timesharing operating systems that allowed for more efficient use of computing resources. As our document of the month, we attach some of his interviews and a report on his Chairperson's address at the 38th convocation, all sourced from IIMA Alumnus: "We need managers, rather than administrators", convocation speech, IIMA Alumnus, Volume 35, Issue 02, June 2003, p.8.; "The Indian manager has to become much more technology savvy", Special Interview, IIMA Alumnus, Volume 31, Issue 01, Jan-Feb 1999, p. 16-18.; "Integrating technology and strategy is the way of business", Special Interview, IIMA Alumnus, Volume 34, Issue 01, February 2002, p. 19. In 2019, we had the privilege of interviewing him as part of the IIMA Archives Oral History Project. In his interview, he recounted his upbringing, his motivation to join IIMA, various experiences at the IIMA computer centre, and key decisions taken as the chairperson of the board of IIMA such as defending IIMA's autonomy from government interference, designing a five-year financial planning model for the first time at IIMA, appointing alumni on IIMA board, and starting the practice of inviting alumni to deliver the IIMA convocation address. You can see the video snippets on the following link: Link: https://archives.iima.ac.in/oralhistory/Narayana-Murthy.html.