Why doesn't Mr. Narayan Murthy help the ones who actually want to work 72 Hours/week?

Mr. Narayan Murthy has once again drummed up the 72 hour work-week routine. He referenced the "9,9,6 rule" of China (9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week), advising people to "get a life and then worry about work-life balance".

Consistent with his usual spiel, Mr. Murthy also said that "no individual, no community, no country has ever come up without hard work."

All that's beautiful. And while much can be said for or against these statements (and the ramifications of them), I have one serious issue with Mr. Murthy saying such things specifically. It's this:

Why didn't he ever support people who actually want to work 80 to 100 hours a week? And why doesn't he support them, still?

If you look at the Indian populace, there's the salaried class, and then there's the entrepreneurial class. The former really cares about things like work life balance (as it perhaps should), but the latter? It's far away from even the concept of it! If you ask any entrepreneur; he could be bootstrapped and struggling for years without pay, rubbing his rear against a million sandpapers on a daily basis, having emptied his personal savings for the "dream", and living on the patronage of his girlfriend/wife with due regrets…but "Work life balance" would probably still not be in the list of things that are on his mind.

9,9,6? He puts in 10,10,7. And with no qualms.

Yet, where is Mr. Murthy for these people? Where are his angel investments? Where is Infosys' early stage fund or incubation centre? Murthy Sir talks about the importance of research. Then why has Infosys' R&D spend always been <.5% of revenue? How many startups is Murthy Sir mentoring? How can we reach out to him?

Mind you, Infosys isn't a poor company. It has cash reserves of about ₹48,000 Cr (~$6B), and has been around since 1981. Yet, when it came to startup investments, "Infosys Innovation Fund" was announced only in 2013, and all the investments transacted by the fund were done with Mr. Sikka at the helm. What happened next? He was unceremoniously fired, and that was the end of it. As of now, the fund has invested only $62.2M in startups, directly and indirectly.

Coming to Mr. Murthy's family office - Catamaran Ventures. Instead of supporting entrepreneurs, what the firm did was help Amazon violate Indian FDI laws by propping up a shell company which the Ecomm giant used to run its (inventory controlled) marketplace. While CV claims to have an AUM of over $1B with 37 investments, 3 unicorns and 8 IPOs to its name, the details aren't clear. Nowhere has the fund shown the history (or even intent) to lead investments in early stage companies. Almost all of them have been mature stage group deals; the "go with the flow" type stuff.

As an entrepreneur, I completely agree with Mr. Murthy's remarks on hard work. I've been at it for over 13 years. But unfortunately, I have nothing to thank him for.

On the other hand, god bless folks like Bikhchandani Sir, Kamath Sir, etc. If not for them, where would we have been..

Mr. Narayan Murthy's actions have been very antithetical to his wishes for India.

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