Narayana Murthy had three options to redress the situation. As thepresident of Nasscom then, he could use the credibility of the organisationin preventing IBM from setting up shop by appealing to the government. Or hecould sit back thinking about his unfortunate `karma'. The third alternativewas to analyse why employees would leave his company and go to amultinational.

Narayana Murthy decided to go for the third option: by finding out the rootcause, eliminate employee attrition. This information would reveal, hereckoned, how far Infosys has travelled as a most preferred place ofemployment.

Infosys conducted a survey through an independent agency in 1992 among theIITs, IIMs and RECs to find out how many would join Infosys. The shockinganswer: zero per cent! In February 1999, the response to the surveyconducted by the same agency was different - 90 per cent opted for theemployment by the company. There were 75,000 applicants, 1500 were selectedon the basis of tests and interviews and 1200 ultimately joined. The 80 percent acceptability was a world record, Narayana Murthy said. This wasachieved over the years by focussing on ground rules. The company's imagewas enhanced when it moved forward as a pack leader - first to achieveISO/9001 and then move on to CMM level 5 apart from spending nine per centof revenue on technology year after year - in addition to five per cent onR&D.

Narayan Murthy's tips now: Take care of employees by giving them an enviablepay package, even more than MNCs, institute stock option schemes. Help themlearn (as the industry was always moving forward and was never in a state offlux) by giving them the means.At the macro level, the company once moreopted for out-of-box-thinking by focussing on a judicious mix of business.

About 25-30 per cent of the customised software solutions was delivered atthe client site while the remaining was delivered from India which was farmore inexpensive. The mix allowed for solution costs to be 50 per centcheaper than anything offered by anybody else, Murthy explained. This gave31 per cent margins-profit post tax-and gave further scope to improverevenue. The global delivery model followed by Infosys insisted onexcellence in execution, on time or ahead of ahead of time and well withinthe budget.

Infosys also believes in a healthy sense of paranoia - the following quartershould always be better than the previous quarter or one would be out of theradar screen, Murthy said. Also one should always keep one's eyes and earsopen to adopt good practices from outside.