Bill Gates & Narayana Murthy at the TIE event

I got a chance to attend the TIE event in New Delhi titled ‘Unleashing Entrepreneurship in India ‘. The event featured Bill Gates & Narayanan Murthy in conversation with Prannoy Roy, who himself is a very successful media entrepreneur, apart from being India’s best television host. I had expected it to be a small gathering but about 300 people from Delhi’s corporate and entrepreneurship circuit attended it.

The discussion wasn’t about Microsoft and Infosys; rather it was about Bill Gates and Narayana Murthy, the individuals, at the helm of their respective companies. It was about their persona, their motivations, their views & interests and how they feel about their entrepreneurial careers.

The issues that came up for discussion were what you would typically expect – how did their foray into entrepreneurship begin, their business models, competition in their industries, open source software, their views on the international politics, their charity work etc. For a quick walkthrough of the discussion, you can read Rediff’s coverage of the event titled ‘The Bill Gates-Narayana Murthy Jugalbandi‘.

Ask anybody at random, what they think are the current issues topmost in Bill Gate’s mind; you are likely to get answers like competition from Google & Yahoo, open source software, software piracy, anti-trust lawsuits etc. If that is true, he certainly did not give that impression. To me, he seemed hugely moved by the increasing ubiquitous presence of computers in human society and the role played by software in making that happen. He talked at length about how computers had evolved in our lives – from the days of DOS, to the advent of GUI, to the development of the browser and the Internet. He believed that the next big milestone around the corner is the development of the natural interface computer with its ability to understand voice command, talk back at you etc. When asked about what kept him awake at night, he said that he would be hugely disappointed if somebody else was able to put artificial intelligence into the PC before Microsoft. Clearly, his concerns and obsessions seemed to be related to such higher order issues than to the running of his business.

Obviously, the question of Google was brought up by Prannoy Roy. Bill Gates described it as the familiar death knell sounded out to Microsoft by industry observers every two years. His response, like on earlier occasions was a simple ‘not this time, somebody try again’. He thought that people were grossly underestimating what Microsoft is capable of.

Narayana Murthy, on the other hand, seemed very much the symbol of compassionate capitalism that he is made out to be. He narrated how his business partners came close to selling off Infosys in 1991 for a million dollars but he prevailed over everybody to hold on. I loved the anecdote he narrated to assert that we Indians are just too talkative and argumentative rather than being action oriented.

Overall, it was a very inspiring experience; seeing these icons in life and blood made them seem far more human that what they otherwise appear.