DHNS
Bangalore, Nov 5: Wives now share with their husbands the burden of earning money, working together and supporting one another. Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy’s significant other half has done just that.
Sudha Murty on Thursday sold 20 lakh shares of Infosys Technologies owned by her in the open market for over Rs 430 crore.
The money raised would go into the corpus of Catamaran, a venture capital fund founded by her husband.
A regulatory disclosure made by Infosys to Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) says: “N R Narayana Murthy has informed the company that the proceeds of the sale will be used as a corpus for the venture capital fund that is being set up in India by him to assist young entrepreneurs in their business, primarily in India.”
Post sell-off, Sudha’s holding will be reduced to 73.14 lakh shares, representing 1.27 per cent stake in the company.
Last month, Murthy had also sold 0.13 per cent stake to raise Rs 174 crore to invest in the venture capital fund.
In an early interview to a TV channel, Narayana Murthy had said that the name ‘Catamaran’ has its origin in the Tamil word “kattumaram”, which is a type of a multi-hulled country boat comprising two hulls joined by some structure. It is used by the fishing community off the southern coast of Tamil Nadu.
Murthy had explained that Catamaran Venture Fund would primarily look at early stage investments or “angel funding” and the plan was to have a team of three to four experienced people to manage the fund.
More opportunities
Catamaran will look at opportunities offered by entrepreneurs in a wide variety of fields and a broad spectrum of fields, Murthy said. “I don’t want to limit it to one field, like hi-tech or retail or any of those. In India, if you limit yourself to one area, then the number of opportunities is not as high as elsewhere,” Murthy said last month.
According to the September quarter shareholding data available with stock exchanges, Sudha held 1.62 per cent in Infosys, while Murthy held 0.55 per cent stake before selling.
The disclosure further added that “they do not have plans for raising further capital for the fund at present”.
The couple’s daughter Akshata and son Rohan holds 1.41 per cent and 1.39 per cent stake respectively in Infosys.