Sudha Murty is a distinguished Indian philanthropist, educator, and author who currently serves as a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha, a position she was nominated to in 2024. As the founder-chairperson of the Infosys Foundation, she transitioned from a groundbreaking career as the first female engineer at TELCO to a life dedicated to social work and rural development. Her immense contributions have been recognized with India's highest civilian honors, including the Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri.

A prolific writer in both Kannada and English, Murty is celebrated for literary works such as Dollar Bahu and How I Taught My Grandmother to Read. Beyond her own accolades, she is a central figure in a prominent global family, being married to Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy and the mother of Akshata Murty, through whom she is the mother-in-law of former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Her legacy is further cemented by her academic and cultural patronage, most notably through the Murty Classical Library of India at Harvard University.

Sudha Murty

Sudha Murty was born in 1950 in Shiggaon in north Karnataka. She did her MTech in computer science, and is now the chairperson of the Infosys Foundation. A prolific writer in English and Kannada, she has written novels, technical books, travelogues, collections of short stories and non-fiction pieces and four books for children. Her books have been translated into all major Indian languages and have sold over four lakh copies around the country. She was the recipient of the R.K. Narayan Award for Literature and the Padma Shri in 2006 and the Attimabbe Award from the government of Karnataka for excellence in Kannada literature in 2011.