Ten years ago on this day I received one of the most anticipated emails of my life: the job offer letter from my first employer, Infosys [NASDAQ:INFY].
I was waiting for the outcome of the interview and I knew they’d email me the outcome. I was very keen so I could not wait more for their email. But I had no way to instantly know if I received any email.
At that time the internet was not prevalent and was only available at cybercafes. Yahoo was cool. So I was using Yahoo Mail. My mobile phone was a Motorola Talkabout I loaned from my uncle. It has no silicon that could hook it up to data networks. Mobile notifications were literally unheard of.
But thankfully Yahoo used to offer a service called Yahoo SMS Alerts. Yahoo will send an SMS with the subject of the email to the registered mobile number whenever a new email arrives in the inbox. So in 2004, on this same day, I received a text that conveyed the good news.
I became an Infoscion (scion of Infosys family) and remained so for little over 6 years. This experience changed me in few interesting ways. Because Infosys is not like any other company in its class. I say this not just because I worked there or people are world class or campuses are magnificent. I can never forget my training experience at the then unfinished Infosys Mysore GEC. [Yes, what’s seen in this video is the training facility of an IT services company].
Visions diverge and things change so I eventually moved on. Now I am an Exfoscion (ex-Infoscion) and a minority investor. I miss a few things but if I have to pick one single thing I miss about Infosys, it would be the InfyBLOGS, a LiveJournal based internal blogging platform. I will write more about this later.
Unfortunately, once the darling of the Dalal Street is now going through the challenging times but I am confident that Infosys will reclaim its leadership under the guidance of Dr. Vishal Sikka.