N.R. Narayana Murthy on liberalization-1991

In Murthy's telling, Infosys only really accelerated after the 1991 economic reforms. With licensing scrapped, foreign travel eased, consultant imports permitted and capital-goods imports simplified, the company could finally import equipment, bring in experts and grow at the pace its backlog demanded.

He framed the opportunity as releasing the power of India's English-speaking technical talent to produce software for the global market. Even so, the first decade was marked by tremendous friction to business, and Infosys only truly accelerated after the 1991 reforms that came after India's foreign reserves had collapsed to about 1.2 billion dollars.

He credited then-Finance Minister Manmohan Singh's 1991 reforms with three transformative moves: removing licensing (so Infosys no longer had to lobby Delhi to import equipment), permitting easier foreign travel and imports, and allowing 100 percent foreign equity. That last change brought IBM and Coca-Cola back, intensifying competition for talent rather than for a barely-existent domestic market.

Chanda observed that Murthy's personal net worth by 2006 was roughly equal to India's entire 1991 foreign reserve figure of 1.2 billion dollars — a striking symmetry that framed both how far Infosys had climbed and how constrained the country itself had been at the moment of liberalisation.