Follow these seven simple steps to build the perfect marketing plan:

Step 1: Narrow your market focus. Try to describe your ideal customer in the narrowest and most detailed terms possible, as though you’re describing him or her to a referral source

Step 2: Position your business. Figure out what you do best and what your target market wants. Maybe it’s how you serve a niche or package your products. If you don’t know what it is, call up three or four of your clients and ask them why they buy from you. Craft a core marketing message that allows you to quickly differentiate your business.

Step 3: Create education-based marketing materials. Recreate all your marketing materials, including your website, to focus on education. Make certain every word in your marketing materials speaks of your core messages and to your target market.

Step 4: Never cold call. Make sure all your advertising is geared toward creating prospects, not customers. You must find ways to educate before you sell. Your target market needs to learn how you provide value in a way that makes them want to pay a premium for your services or products. You simply can’t do this in a 3-inch-by-4-inch ad. Your ad must get viewers to ask for more information. Then you can proceed to selling. Determine all the ways you can get your education-based messages in front of your narrowly defined target market.

Step 5: Earn media attention. Create a list of journalists who cover your industry or community, and build relationships with each by becoming a reliable resource of information. Plan out an entire year of new items you can promote by season or event.

Step 6: Expect referrals. Create a referral marketing engine that systematically turns each client and referral network into a kind of unpaid sales pro. You must instill a referral marketing mind-set into your business’s culture. Do this by making every customer a marketing and referral contact. Map every contact and build processes that focus on referrals.

Step 7: Live by a calendar. After you complete steps 1 through 6, determine what you need to do to put them into action. Then create an annual marketing calendar, noting the required monthly, weekly and daily appointments necessary to move your plan forward.

01. AT&T Inc.

 This is an ideal example of how a subtle upgrade can make a huge difference.

02. BP Garage

 A completely different direction and modern feel. A huge improvement!

03. Sprint

 Looking at the old sprint logo it’s obvious a re-design was needed.

04.  Mindshare

A great find via Brand New. Great use of colours & typography.

05. Mustang 2010

The current 2009 Logo, compared to 2011. Subtle improvements, but wow so much more aggression!

06. Adobe Photoshop CS4

Adobe has come a long way in a short time, I like the way things are going.

07. Discovery Channel

Probably one of my favourites. Really love the placement of elements.

08. Fanta

The old can really does look dated compared to the new look.

09. Johnsons Baby

Not one of the obvious choices, but I love the softer approach.

10. Fiat Bravo

Yeah that’s right, a car made it into the list. A great example of a successful redesign, and Fiat’s recent sales figures prove it. Plus I drive this car, so a very biased choice!

A redesign can be worth its weight in gold if you get it right.

Traditional media such as TV, radio and print play on the number people they are able to touch with every exposure of their material but no one can accurately measure or give a reliable approximate of how the exposure helps your brand.

Non-traditional advertising or guerrilla marketing was able to address that empty space by putting the brand closer to consumers. Guerilla marketing or advertising materials directly interacts with the consumers. When the consumer interacts, you are certain that these are the consumers with whom your brand had the biggest impact with. It also allows you to measure result, if you like, by monitoring how many people actually reacted to your brand in different levels.

There is also the additional media values that brands get when they come up with an outstanding campaign that major media outlets feel worthy of being featured. TV are now willing to dedicate an entire segment to different marketing materials that they know the public will be interested in.

Young people will rule the world

Listen to young people.

Young people are not only good as models, they are authorities now. I am not just talking about internet-based businesses such as Google and facebook, I am talking about young people extending their reach to almost everything around us. People who aren’t even legal are building business empires that stretch from clothing lines to new product innovations/inventions.

2012 will see more young people coming forward to establish their credibility and show the world that young people have arrived. And more people will listen. If the older generation wants a piece of what they are bound to conquer, they should listen and follow their lead.

Celebrities will still work but you might need to find them before they become one

Celebrities will still work as endorsers but unlike five years ago, you might have to spot them while no one else has, while they are still “affordable” and cooperative. Look into reality shows, local unsigned bands, local talent shows, youtube and facebook. Look into any channel that provides opportunity for wannabe celebrities to flaunt their skills and potential.

Look for someone you think will make it and stick with it. That’s what companies will be doing to get celebrities cheap and have money for media.

Small Business Becomes Big Business

GroupOn, LivingSocial, and Blue Note have demonstrated the true power and advantages of target advertising. They created multi-billion dollar businesses in just a few short years. They created stars, they created new products and they know that these are just tips of the iceberg.

As they are actually left with not a lot of choice but to be wise in choosing who to expose their brands to, they just might find themselves launching a new wave of innovations to leverage on the local market with specific behaviour.

As a result, more entrepreneurs are actually looking at launching brands or products for local consumption and more of them will see their business going national or even global.

Google vs Facebook

In 2012, Google will continue to not pay attention to facebook’s threat, at least it will continue to make us all believe they don’t care. Google will use their leverage and reach to get into the social networking business without having to depart from their core competency and that is, search.

Facebook, on the other hand, will be busy not just with Google but also battling other companies that will find ways on how to target social segments to fit the demographics required by advertisers. Right now there is the Omnicom group, Media6Degrees, 33 Across, and Radium One. They have the advantage of being partners with more companies longer so it is easier for them to acquire more data through physical means unlike Facebook who acquired their data through registration. We all know that a lot of the pieces of information people enter online are inaccurate.

Google will continue to establish search as the better advertising route, Facebook will continue to highlight the advantages of social ads.

What Advertising Trends to Expect in 2012: Happy 2012

It’s going to be an exciting time for businesses and advertising. The world seems to be over the worst part of the international economic crisis and unless a world war breaks out, we will be headed upwards.

This means better times for advertising as well. If there is any time for businesses to experiment, 2012 is it. The market is more open and utilities to enable people to experiment is at your disposal

I’ve divided search marketing into two topics. Search engine marketing (SEM) which is PPC (Pay Per Click) and CPC (Cost Per Click) programs such as Google Adwords that allow you to pay for a sponsored listing in the search results. And search engine optimization (SEO) which is the process of gaining a higher natural search position in the search engines.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

1. Create a search marketing budget.

• How much will you need to spend to get a Admission?
• How much profit do you make per Admission?
• How will you track and improve your ads?

1. Advertise through Google Adwords.

• Largest market, most searches
• Highest competition
• May need to focus on a smaller niche to be profitable

1. Advertise through Yahoo Search Marketing

• Moderate search volume and competition

1. Advertise through Microsoft adCenter

• Moderate search volume
• Lower competition

1. Advertise through Ask.com

• Low search volume
• Low competition

1. Look for new niches and customer groups to offer your products and services to decrease competition.
2. Use keyword tools to research what your potential customers are searching for.
3. Google’s keyword tool is a free tools to help research what people are searching for.
4. Use local search marketing area specifications to target a specific city or zip code. Again reducing competition and increasing effectiveness. (It also help to set priorities of other mode of marketing in those areas)
5. Track Your Search Engine Marketing: Track leads, track conversions, track what each keyword does or doesn’t do for you.
6. Adjust your campaign to explore more of the keywords that work and decrease bids on the keywords that don’t preform as well.
7. Create multiple landing pages and test the effectiveness of each landing page. Test different layouts, different copy, different calls to action.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

1. Research what words your potential customers are searching with.
2. Write search engine optimized titles that use the words that your customer are searching for.
3. Get those same keywords in the link text of sites that are linking to you.
4. Make sure the sites you get links on are on the same topic as your site is.
5. Get quality relevant links from reputable sites.
6. Build one-way links by:

• List in related quality directories
• Posting in related forums
• Commenting on related blogs
• Guest blogging
• Writing guest articles
• Submitting articles to directories
• Social bookmarking your site

1. Don’t link to sites that are seen as bad sites by the search engines. (Make sure they are well listed in Google)
2. Use the same keywords in the body text of your content.
3. Create great content focused on your topic that people want to link to.
4. “Link Bait” with catchy article names and content like “Do you have potentianl? Prove and get a chance for direct admission”!
5. Get that content in front of the eyes of some of the more established sites in your topic. (By commenting on blogs, interacting in forums, etc.)
6. Track what search terms bring what conversions. Focus your keyword optimization efforts on the best performing keywords.
7. Make your site search engine navigable. Search engines can’t follow:

• Pure javascript dropdown menus or links
• Pages that are accessed by a form (login form, submit button, etc.)

1. Try not to use frames.
2. Make every page accessible within 3 clicks.
3. Create an XML sitemap
4. Get listed in a paid directory like Best of the Web (BOTW) or Yahoo Directory.
5. Don’t:

• have hidden text
• use cloaking
• spam keywords on the page
• duplicate content

1. Do:

• Write good relevant content
• Design your site for your users
• Follow Google’s Guidelines

Email Marketing Ideas

Email marketing is broken into building your own list and advertising in other lists.

Build an email marketing list

1. Collect emails at tradeshows and other events.
2. Place a newsletter subscription form on your website.
3. Set a standard by delivering quality informative content.
4. Don’t worry about how often, just provide high quality content. It’s better to have an infrequent email newsletter that’s always read than a frequent newsletter that goes straight to the trash.

Advertise in email newsletters

1. Set an objective to your campaign.
2. Use tested and proven copy.
3. Track everything. Clicks, where they go, short term ROI as well as long-term projected ROI.
4. Test on a smaller segment of the target audience first.
5. Select a newsletter that is relevant and informative. Is it something that you would delete or actually read?

Social Marketing Ideas

1. Participate in blogging communities.
2. Participate in forums and use a Signature Line.
3. Participate in wikis.
4. Comment on other blogs with relevant and useful information.
5. Publish your own blog.

• Ping blog directories
• Use Feedburner

1. Promote your RSS feed for your blog or other website content.
2. Build a online social network.
3. Get involved with social bookmarking communities.
4. Make your site easy to bookmark with AddThis or with Digg, Delicious, or other bookmarking links.
5. Add a favicon so that your brand is shown when people bookmark your site in their browser.
6. Write articles for sites.
7. Write blogs for other blog sites.
8. Get to know the bloggers that blog to your customer group.
9. Promote your site through flickr or other image communities.
10. Host an online event.

Website Marketing Ideas

Website Design

1. Make a usable website.

• Simple navigation
• Clear call to action (How they can find out more or signup.)
• Readable font size
• Design tested in all major web browsers
• Look at Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines

1. Focus your website layout on calling the visitor to action and building leads.
2. Clean and minimize your design to focus the attention of the visitor on what is most important.
3. Create a lightweight design that will load quickly on any internet connection. Nothing turns a visitor away faster than a page that won’t load.
4. Use web analytics to analyze where your visitors are coming from and going to so you can optimize your website design and content. Benchmark your changes to increase visitor retention and the amount of time they remain on your site.

• If you have a high bounce rate (where people quickly leave the site after first visiting) try modifying the keywords that you are optimizing your pages for. The keywords people are finding you with may not be the people searching for your product or service.

1. Use small compressed images with alt tags filled in with descriptions.
2. Have friends or family test your website and get there feedback. Did they know what your site was about? What they could do or get there? Was there anything that was annoying?

Viral Marketing Ideas

1. Make a hilarious video that features your product.
2. Make a video that others can re-brand with their affiliate links.
3. Have a promotional competition. Who can send the most visitors, who can make the most sales, generate the most leads.
4. Give people an online research tool. ( Ex. Compare Different B-School etc)

1. Let customers know you.

Good relationships are built on trust. So it’s natural that customers want to learn as much as they can about your company and the people that stand behind it. Women shoppers, in particular, look for deeper information when deciding on which company or service to choose, and the vast majority of both male and female shoppers do research on the web before making a purchase. Having a company website is a smart and affordable way to convey in-depth information about your service business.  (Get in touch with any Good Website Designing Company like Identity Designing for that.)

Showcase your service benefits on the main page, just as you would in an effective company brochure. Include your company’s story, photos, staff bios and affiliations. And show how well your company delivers on its promises by providing testimonials, case histories or work samples.

2. Compete based on value.

What will make customers or clients select your company vs. your competitor’s? Most choose the service provider that offers the greatest value for their money. In many competitive markets, there’s price parity among the principal players. So the best way to win business is not to cut your prices or rates, but instead add products or services that elevate your offer–making it too good to resist. This is called “bundling.”

Take time to develop a service bundle that you know will appeal to your best prospects. You may need to test various offers until you find a winning combination; then modify your offer periodically to keep your incentives fresh.

3. Tempt customers with incentives.

Customers who’ve had positive experiences with your company’s services in the past will happily return. But tempting new customers requires making a special offer. Businesses that provide home services, such as rug cleaning, painting, home heating or air conditioning, can benefit by sending consumers coupons . For long-term results, create a special offer that will motivate new customers to make more than a single purchase.

4. Keep in touch.

It costs considerably less to keep a customer than to win a new one, so it’s smart to maintain a campaign to upsell or resell existing customers. In fact if you’re not communicating with your customer database at least every four to six weeks, you’re missing opportunities to grow your business. Use a combination of sales and marketing tactics to stay in touch, such as alternating sales calls with e-mail and postal mail. Even with the best of offers, you can burn out your list if you pitch customers too often. So rather than sending only communications with hard-sell offers, intersperse them with e-newsletters containing case histories or other soft-sell but relevant and valuable information.

Make a habit of periodically using your marketing communications to ask for referrals. You can e-mail a success story, for example, and ask the recipients to forward it to friends or family members who would like to achieve similar results. By providing deep information about your company for new customers and ongoing offers and communications with existing customers, you’ll create a synergistic campaign that builds strong relationships.

This post is a quick take on the leadership lessons from the person himself, Shri Anna Hazare.One can easily draw parallels in what good leadership can be and must be, from this person and his movement against corruption.

Here are a few leadership nuggets from this event.

1.Mission -

leadership has to be for the right cause, and must be built around the right cause, which your followers (read as team for organisation) can connect with, without any explanation and lengthy speeches extolling the virtues of the cause. When the mission is clear and simple, the followers come in naturally. The key is to create a connect for every individual into the mission. The fear that corruption has almost got rampant, and uncontainable is what propelled a whole lot of people to volunteer them to the cause of Anna Hazare. Adding to that was the fear that the country was losing its sheen in the international community, being seen as the most corrupt nation in the globe, with no sensible national leadership.

2.Commitment from the top -

 Never did Anna Hazare give a call to people to come in support of him. The image of a leader with a unblemished track record sitting in fast began to catch the imagination of thousands and thousands of common citizens, who started to pour out on the streets of the nation. Leadership which just speaks jargon and stays cutoff from the people of the organisation is leadership in a void. And that happens so offten in the organisation. Just big strategy in the boardrooms with a handful at the top, sans any clue of what happens on the ground, does not take the leader or organisation anywhere.

3.Qualities when not in limelight -

Leadership gets immense power without any extraordinary effort, when the person leading has acquired the power or charisma by living a life centred around great causes. Integrity is non-negotiable, come what may. And for that even when not in the limelight, the leader ought to be setting examples by the day. And that never happens when the leader is a kind of the person whose acts have to come under scrutiny. The exact opposite is indeed true – the leader is the kind of person who can be trusted blindly by his followers, and just no one in the outside world (the business enviroment) can point a finger.

4.Goals sacro-sanct -

The message that the goals of the movement (organisation or department) are non-negotiable, come what may has to be made loud and clear by the leader. The clarity makes it sure that those who have an iota of doubt on the goals and the cause don’t come in the band-wagon at all. The org does not need people who don’t just believe in the goal. The goal at the outset might seem undoable, unrealistic, and loud. Yet, with fiery determination, the leader must make sure that the goals are achieved at any cost. It is also important for the leader to keep sending these messages to his troops – “I am not going to give up, even if it costs my life”. And there is no need for him to add, you also be like me – that happens by the sheer courage and commitment leadership displays.

5.Decision making -

There can be many faces to the movement (organisation), yet the troops and the whole world out there know that decision making is centred with the leader, and just not anyone else. There can be people going around carrying messages and all, yet, the final decision vests completely and only with the leader. Fact and perception as well in this point on decision making is crucial (look at the images spread saying that the emissaries are with Anna and await his decision.. this was done again and again).

These apart, there came a whole lot of lessons for other functions as well. Like for HR, as how to build a talent acquisition strategy centred around great leadership (may not alway work for an organisation – what happens if the leaders hops to another org?), for Corp Comm and PR – as to how building a cause centric image for the organisation will bring in the sought after media coverage, without releases churned by the day.

……there will he a handful of lessons in the Anna Hazare.

Based on my experience and what I have learned, here are the main points I have gathered.

Targeting Options

One of the main benefits of using Facebook Ads are the targeting options.  Take advantage of being able to refine your ads by Age, Demographics, Likes/Dislikes, Employer, Sex, etc…

Bidding Strategy

Unlike Google Adwords, Facebook gives you the option of either Cost Per Click or Click Per 1000 Impressions (CPM).  There are a few bidding strategies that you should be aware of to maximize your ROI.

1. Start with CPC: By starting with a cost-per-click model, you can continue to refine your campaign and ONLY pay when someone clicks on your ad.  If you started with a CPM model, you would be paying every 1000 impressions, regardless of how effective or how many clicks you receive.

2.  Switch to CPM: After you have spend time refining your campaigns (adjusting bids, ad copy, images) and you are getting a high CPC, you should then switch it over to CPM.  This way your spend will go way down and your traffic will stay high.

3.  Crank Up Your Spend: Once you have a campaign dialed in and you are making money, its time to crank up your ad spend.  If you can make $2 for every $1 you spend, there is no reasons that you should increase your spend way up to maximize profits!

Ad Copy

REMEMBER:  The most important aspect of your Facebook ads are the images.  The image has about 75% bearing on whether or not the user clicks on your ad.  Make sure you test multiple ad images as well as different types of images.  This can include Stock vs Amateur images, Female vs Male, different ages, etc….

In terms of your headline, asking questions always seem to do very well.  Asking a relevant question, spikes peoples interests and gets their attention.  In the body if you can tell them that you have a solution to their problem; these types of ads seem to do very well.

Landing Page Concepts

It is important to realize that even though you can drive a lot of traffic via Facebook Ads, that doesn’t mean that people are ready to buy.  Generally when people are on Facebook, they are not there to shop.

When you create your landing page, MOST of the time, you will see better results if you send them to a lead generation page that is a free offer.  If you try to directly sell them something, your results will suffer.  If you entice the user to give an email address with a contest, offer or free piece of content, you can follow up with them with an email marketing campaign later. 

Analyze, Refine….Analyze, Refine

Saving the best for last is analyzing your campaigns. After you have been running your ad campaigns for a little while and have some data, you want to analyze that data to see how you can further target your campaign.

Things to Analyze:

1.CTR
2.Clicks by Age Bucket
3.Clicks by Demographic
4.Ads by Purchase/Leads
5.Summary of Likes/Dislikes by Purchase/Lead

However different business require different Advertisement Solution. Please read our another blog to know When to use Google and when to use Facebook advertisements?

Identity Designing  introduces, Free Reseller Plan for Aspiring Entrepreneurs.

Now one can start there own Domain, Hosting,  Email Space and Digital Certificate Registration Business without any Initial Payment.

Important Feature, Identity Designing  offer in this Reseller Program.

• A Free Store Front Portal
• A Comprehensive Product portfolio for your Customers and Resellers
• A Ready made, private labeled website for you and your Resellers
• Multilingual private labeled Control panels for you and your Resellers
• Complete Business Process Automation
• A Comprehensive API for seamless integration
• Low Wholesale Prices
• Comprehensive Product Portfolio – Domains, Hosting, Email,Site builder and more…
• Completely private-labeled – Your Customers cannot discover us

Automate your Reseller Business

• Sales and Marketing Automation
• Finance and Billing Automation
• Provisioning Automation
• Managing Identity Designing Products & Services
• Managing Customers & Resellers

Products

• Domain Registration – Free Services with Every Domain!Linux and Windows Web Hosting
• Email with Antispam and Antivirus
• Digital Certificates

I think becoming a reseller for the serious entrepreneur is one of the best paths you can go to make true passive income. Once you get the turnkey unwrapped and customized, it’s basically an automatic money maker that can provide passive income if you build strong and stick with it.

For more details. you can visit: – http://identitydesigning.com/resellers.htm

 The next day I went there at 7′ o ! clock since I had to go to the tailor near the hotel. And what do I see? Mr. Murty waiting in front of the hotel and it was only seven. Till today, Murty maintains that I had mentioned (consciously! ) that I would be going to the tailor at 7 so that I could meet him… And I maintain that I did not say any such thing consciously or unconsciously because I did not think of Murty as anything other than a friend at that stage. We have agreed to disagree on this matter.

Soon, we became friends. Our conversations were filled with Murty’s experiences abroad and the books that he has read. My friends insisted that Murty as trying to impress me because he was interested in me. I kept denying it till one fine day, after dinner Murty said, I want to tell you something. I knew this   as it. It was coming. He said, I am 5’4″ tall. I come from a lower middle class family. I can never become rich in my life an! d I can never give you any riches. You are beautiful, bright, and intelligent and you can get anyone you want. But will you marry me? I asked Murty to give me some time for an answer. My father didn’t want me to marry a wannabe politician, (a communist at that) who didn’t have a steady job and wanted to build an orphanage…

When I went to Hubli I told my parents about Murty and his proposal. My mother was positive since Murty was also from Karnataka, seemed intelligent and comes from a good family. But my father asked: What’s his job, his salary, his qualifications etc? Murty was working as a research assistant and was earning less than me. He was willing to go dutch with me on our outings. My parents agreed to meet Murty in Pune on a particular day at10 a. m sharp. Murty did not turn up. How can I trust a man to take care of my daughter if he cannot keep an appointment, asked my father.

At 12noon Murty turned up in a bright red shirt! He had gone on work to Bombay , was stuck in a traffic jam on the ghats, so he hired a taxi(though it was very expensive for him) to meet his would-be father-in-law. Father was unimpressed. My father asked him what he wanted to become in life.

Murty said he wanted to become a politician in the communist party and wanted to open an orphanage. My father gave his verdict. NO. I don’t want my daughter to marry somebody who wants to become a communist and then open an orphanage when he himself didn’t have money to support his family.

Ironically, today, I have opened many orphanages   something, which Murty wanted to do 25 years ago. By this time I realized I had developed a liking towards Murty which could only be termed as love. I wanted to marry Murty because he is an honest man. He proposed to me highlighting the negatives in his life. I promised my father that I will not marry Murty without his blessings though at the same time, I cannot marry anybody else. My father said he would agree if Murty promised to take up a steady job. But Murty refused saying he will not do things in life because somebody wanted him to. So, I was caught between the two most important people in my life.

 The stalemate continued for three years during which our courtship took us to every restaurant and cinema hall in Pune. In those days, Murty was always broke. Moreover, he didn’t earn much to manage. Ironically today, he manages Infosys Technologies Ltd., one of the world’s most reputed companies. He always owed me money. We used to go for dinner and he would say, I don’t have money with me, you pay my share, I will return it to you later. For three years I maintained a book on Murty’s debt to me.. No, he never returned the money and I finally tore it up after my wedding.

The amount was a little over Rs 4000. During this interim period Murty quit his job as research assistant and started his own software business. Now, I had to pay his salary too! Towards the late 70s computers were entering India in a big way.

During the fag end of 1977 Murty decided to take up a job as General Manager at Patni computers in Bombay .. But before he joined the company he wanted to marry me since he was to go on training to the US after joining. My father gave in as he was happy Murty had a decent job, now.
WE WERE MARRIED IN MURTY’S HOUSE IN BANGALORE ON FEBRUARY 10, 1978 WITH ONLY OUR TWO FAMILIES PRESENT.I GOT MY FIRST SILK SARI. THE WEDDING EXPENSES CAME TO ONLY RS 800 (US $17) WITH MURTY AND I POOLING IN RS 400 EACH..
I went to the US with Murty after marriage. Murty encouraged me to see America on my own because I loved travelling. I toured America for three months on backpack and had interesting experiences which will remain fresh in my mind forever. Like the time when the New York police took me into custody because they thought I was an Italian trafficking drugs in Harlem . Or the time when I spent the night at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with an old couple. Murty panicked because he couldn’t get a response from my hotel room even at midnight. He thought I was either killed or kidnapped.

IN 1981 MURTY WANTED TO START INFOSYS. HE HAD A VISION AND ZERO CAPITAL…initially I was very apprehensive about Murty getting into business. We did not have any business background … Moreover we were living a comfortable life in Bombay with a regular pay check and I didn’t want to rock the boat. But Murty was passionate about creating good quality software. I decided to support him. Typical of Murty, he just had a dream and no money. So I gave him Rs 10,000 which I had saved for a rainy day, without his knowledge and told him, This is all I have. Take it. I give you three years sabbatical leave. I will take care of the financial needs of our house. You go and chase your dreams without any worry. But you have only three years!
Murty and his six colleagues started Infosys in 1981,with enormous interest and hard work. In 1982 I left Telco and moved to Pune with Murty. We bought a small house on loan which also became the Infosys office. I was a clerk-cum-cook- cum programmer. I also took up a job as Senior Systems Analyst with Walchand group of Industries to support the house.
In 1983 Infosys got their first client, MICO, in Bangalore . Murty moved to Bangalore and stayed with his mother while I went to Hubli to deliver my second child, Rohan. Ten days after my son was born, Murty left for the US on project work. I saw him only after a year, as I was unable to join Murty in the US because my son had infantile eczema, an allergy to vaccinations. So for more than a year I did not step outside our home for fear of my son contracting an infection. It was only after Rohan got all his vaccinations that I came to Bangalore where we rented a small house in Jayanagar and rented another house as Infosys headquarters. My father presented Murty a scooter to commute. I once again became a cook, programmer, clerk secretary, office assistant et al. Nandan Nilekani (MD of Infosys) and his wife Rohini stayed with us. While Rohini babysat my son, I wrote programs for Infosys. There was no car, no phone, and just two kids and a bunch of us working hard, juggling our lives and having fun while Infosys was taking shape. It was not only me but also the wives of other partners too who gave their unstinted support. We all knew that our men were trying to build something good.
It was like a big joint family,taking care and looking out for one another. I still remember Sudha Gopalakrishna looking after my daughter Akshata with all care and love while Kumari Shibulal cooked for all of us. Murty made it very clear that it would either be me or him working at Infosys. Never the two of us together… I was involved with Infosys initially.
Nandan Nilekani suggested I should be on the Board but Murty said he did not want a husband and wife team at Infosys. I was shocked since I had the relevant experience and technical qualifications. He said, Sudha if you want to work with Infosys, I will withdraw, happily. I was pained to know that I will not be involved in the company my husband was building and that I would have to give up a job that I am qualified to do and love doing.

It took me a couple of days to grasp the reason behind Murty’s request..I realized that to make Infosys a success one had to give
one’s 100 percent. One had to be focussed on it alone with no other distractions. If the two of us had to give 100 percent to Infosys then what would happen to our home and our children? One of us had to take care of our home while the other took care of Infosys.

I opted to be a homemaker, after all Infosys was Murty’s dream. It was a big sacrifice but it was one that had to be made. Even today, Murty says, Sudha, I stepped on your career to make mine. You are responsible for my success.