To formulate a change in the Indian work culture, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy has said that youngsters here should be ready to work 70 hours a week to make the country competitive globally. Narayana said that India needs to improve productivity in India and work on government delays in an interview with Infosys chief executive officer (CEO) Mohandas Pai on 3one4 Capital's podcast "The Record."

Narayana stated, "Unless we improve our work productivity, unless we reduce corruption in the government at some level, because we have been reading, I don't know the truth of it unless we reduce the delays in our bureaucracy in taking this decision, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress." He further added, "So, therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say 'This is my country. I would like to work 70 hours a week'." 

Drawing an example with the work conditions in Germany and Japan after World War II, he highlighted, "This is exactly what the Germans and Japanese did after the Second World War...they made sure that every German worked extra hours for a certain number of years." 

"We need to be disciplined and improve our work productivity. I think unless we do that, ,what can a poor government do? And every government is as good as the culture of the people. And our culture has to change to that of highly determined, extremely disciplined and extremely hard-working people," added Murthy. 

Ola's Bhavish Aggarwal Supports Murthy

Ola's co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Bhavish Aggarwal took to X to support him amid polarized views on the social media post-Murthy's comments. He added in a post, "Totally agree with Mr Murthy's views. It's not our moment to work less and entertain ourselves. Rather it's our moment to go all in and build in 1 generation what other countries have built over many generations!" 

However, Ronnie Screwvala, Founder at upGrad disagreed. In a separate post, he said, "Boosting productivity isn't just about working longer hours. It's about getting better at what you do - Upskilling, having a positive work environment, and fair pay for the work done. Quality of work done > clocking in more hours."